Huge Supreme Court win, Ukraine switches from Wildberries to Ozon warehouses, yes, DSA are damn dirty commies, more Second Amendment progress, Ted Cruz’s book on Clarence Thomas is out, Aussie gets 15 years for shooting a carnival air gun, remembering Dolly, and the NFL finally takes the Pro-Bowl to a farm in the country.
The Supreme Court just handed President Trump a massive victory in the fight to secure America’s elections. The justices cleared the way for his executive order restricting mail-in voting to move forward, and after months of Democrat officials trying to bury the policy in court, the administration finally has room to breathe.
This is a big deal.
The SAVE America Act is still stalled in the Senate, blocked by Democrats who aren’t even hiding the fact they have zero interest in verifying that voters are who they say they are. Trump’s executive order just got a green light from the nation’s highest court anyway. Election integrity doesn’t have to die in the legislative graveyard to make progress.
Trump signed the executive order, called “Ensuring Citizenship Verification And Integrity In Federal Elections,” in March 2026. It directs his administration to build lists of eligible voters and orders the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists. The Postal Service laid out its implementation plan last week, but the clock is ticking. Some states start sending mail ballots in just a few weeks, leaving the administration little time to get this right before the midterms. More court challenges remain possible.
The victory is real, but it’s not the finish line.
Mail balloting has been a target of Trump’s for years, and for good reason. The Heritage Foundation has long argued that mail-in ballots are more susceptible to fraud, coercion, and chain-of-custody problems than in-person voting. Anyone who lived through the 2020 presidential election, one of the most disputed elections in history, watched that vulnerability play out in real time.
It’s official: California just criminalized publicly exposing fraud.
our tax dollars are paying for fraud, and if someone like Nick Shirley exposes this fraud he, not the fraudster, could get in trouble.
More from Nick:
These politicians need the fraud to continue and they sadly use immigrants to do so often. They fund nonprofits and NGOs with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every year for immigration services, including free healthcare, and have now made ‘immigration support service providers’ essentially a protected class in California.
For example, if I film a hospice or a ‘learning center’ with no patients receiving millions through Medicaid and the owner gives me a paper saying I cannot publish the video, I cannot publish it. If I publish it to expose them and they claim it caused them ‘fear’ or a third party threatens them, I face a minimum $4,000 civil fine plus the legal fees of the individual or group suing me.
This bill was created by the Attorney General’s wife and co-sponsored by CHIRLA, a nonprofit that has received over $80,000,000 in taxpayer dollars for ‘immigrant support services.’ Do you understand how this works yet? When the fraud is exposed, they create new laws to protect the fraudsters and penalize those who expose it.
By signing this bill, the Governor and California politicians expose themselves as the corrupt politicians they are. This is not the end; the fight has just begun. More to come soon; this is far from over.
An unconstitutional prior restraint First Amendment violation that will be struck down instantly the first time California tries to enforce it.
If it weren’t for voter fraud, welfare state fraud, crazy trannies, violent criminals and pandering to radical Islamic anti-Semites, the Democrat Party wouldn’t have any business model at all…
“Our goal is Communism,” David Jenkins, a member of DSA’s National Political Committee, said in 2023.
DSA member Cea Weaver is New York City’s tenant tsarina. She posted via X in December 2017, “Elect more communists.” The next year, she demanded: “Seize private property.”
Weaver’s boss is Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In his Jan. 1 inaugural address, he stated: “I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist.” He told a DSA Zoom call in 2021: The “end goal” should be “seizing the means of production.” Mamdani also said, “The abolition of private property … is preferable to what is going on right now.” These comments loudly echo Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ cornerstone collectivist text “The Communist Manifesto.”
The magnificently named Darializa Avila Chevalier rode Mamdani’s endorsement all the way to the Democrat nomination for New York’s 13th Congressional District.
“I’m a democratic socialist,” she boasted June 29 on MS Now. She also wants to “seize the means of production,” as she advised in a not-quite-deleted September 2019 X post. She confessed that December: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag.” In April 2020, she wrote: “Most of the theory I have read is communism but the pyromania associated with anarchism is very intriguing to me.” The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine preserved 3,657 such messages that Chevalier thought she had erased.
For months, the assumption that the Strait of Hormuz was Tehran’s ultimate card dominated commentary on the war.
As a narrow waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and a substantial share of liquefied natural gas had historically passed, it appeared to be a chokepoint Iran could close or severely disrupt at will. It did not need to destroy every tanker. Hitting a small percentage with drones, cruise missiles, speedboats, or mines would spike insurance rates, deter crews and companies, and effectively shut the strait without continuous physical control.
This idea was not new for 2026. It had long been a feature of the Iranian strategic posture, treated as both a military instrument and a political myth-proof that even under pressure Tehran retained a decisive lever over the global energy system. Parts of the Western media and independent analysts amplified the same narrative.
Relying on incomplete open-source shipping data, especially once vessels began sailing dark, many concluded that the United States had been caught unprepared and lacked a realistic path to reopen the waterway. Hormuz, they argued, was effectively closed or closable at Iran’s discretion. That framing was powerful, but also incomplete.
The assumption that Iran’s detection and targeting system could not be dismantled without dramatic escalation proved wrong. Under the U.S. Central Command, also known as CENTCOM, and with significant involvement from the Fifth Fleet and Air Force components, the United States ran a sustained effort to degrade the sensors Iran needed to find and hit ships.
Iran relied on mobile truck-mounted radars, drones, cruise missiles, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) speedboats, and naval mines. Inside the narrow strait, ships move in relatively predictable lanes. Iran combined active radars with passive electro-optical and infrared cameras on elevated terrain and islands such as Qeshm, Larak, and Abu Musa.
Mobile radars would radiate briefly to locate shipping, then shut down and move before anti-radiation missiles could arrive. Once a ship’s approximate position was known, strike systems could be sent to search.
The vulnerability was that every radar emission could be detected. American aircraft responded systematically with anti-radiation missiles while visual and intelligence efforts located the passive sensors. This was the core of what some involved called “draining the swamp.”
Iran had redundancy, but the number of sensors was finite. Hundreds of precision strikes gradually reduced Iran’s ability to see traffic in the strait. As the detection layer thinned, the effectiveness of the strike systems declined with it.
Parallel efforts neutralized mines with unmanned vessels and declared the southern lane near Oman largely clear. Convoys moved under escort, often at night with the automated information system (AIS) off. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with Aegis radars and standard missile (SM)-family interceptors formed the backbone; drones and Apache helicopters armed with laser-guided rockets provided additional cover. American ships also engaged IRGC speedboats that closed on the convoys.
On the commercial side, the United States addressed insurance barriers. In early March, President Donald Trump directed the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to provide political risk insurance and guarantees for maritime trade.
The DFC, working with the Treasury and CENTCOM, established a revolving reinsurance facility of roughly $20 billion-later expanded with private partners including Chubb-focused on hull, machinery, and cargo cover. Early uptake was limited. As Iranian success rates fell, more vessels joined.
Results have been significant. CENTCOM has reported assisting well over a thousand commercial vessels and moving hundreds of millions of barrels since the spring. Independent trackers often showed lower numbers because much of the traffic sailed dark. Pre-war throughput was 20 million to 21 million barrels per day.
Flows through Hormuz remain below that, but combined with the Abu Dhabi-Fujairah pipeline and Saudi Arabia’s pipeline to Yanbu in the Red Sea, volumes recovered enough to keep oil prices in the $85 to $95 range-elevated, but far from the predicted catastrophe.
Followup: “Satellite Imagery of Multiple Ozon Warehouses Destroyed by Ukraine.”
“Big Blast as Drone Storage is Hit By Drone & Project 05060 Patrol Boat Destroyed in Crimea.”
“Ukraine Destroys Rare Su-33 (First Destroyed), MiG-29 and Orion Attack Drone At Anapa Airport.” This was just the other side of the Kerch Straight Bridge. The Su-33 is normally a carrier based aircraft, but since Russia’s only aircraft carrier has been out of service since 2017, they’re doing much desk landing these days.
The surprise visit by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.
The trip was spy-agency chief John Ratcliffe’s first publicly known visit to the Russian capital. It followed new U.S. intelligence assessments, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, that Russian President Vladimir Putin could try to test the resolve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years.
U.S. officials are concerned that Putin, squeezed in Ukraine and under pressure at home, could launch an assault ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion, likely on a Baltic nation, the Journal reported.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice conceded that Americans are allowed to carry in Postal Service buildings.
Snip.
On August 18, a federal judge ruled against Biden’s “ghost gun” ban, saying it violates multiple parts of the Constitution….Judge Reed O’Connor ruled Biden’s “Ghost Gun” rule violates the 2nd and 5th Amendments,
Decision by decision, the Second Amendment is being upheld and gun rights expanded.
More progress: “CDC restores info showing how many good guys with guns stop bad guys after Biden removed it.”
Concerning: “Maryland felony cases against Zizian trans death cult members abruptly suspended. After 18 months of prosecution, Maryland abruptly put its cases against three Zizian trans cult members on indefinite hold. Officials have not publicly explained why.”
The cases against cult leader Jack “Ziz” LaSota and subordinates Michelle “Jamie” “Alex” Zajko and Daniel “Hastur” Blank were made inactive on Aug. 14; All scheduled future trial dates were canceled.
LaSota, Zajko and Blank were arrested together following a national manhunt on Feb. 16, 2025 in rural western Maryland. They were found with a cache of weapons in their two box trucks. They had spent years moving around the country as members of the Zizians, a radical transgender cult who has been linked to at least eight violent deaths.
The three initially faced only misdemeanor trespassing, firearms and obstruction charges after an elderly Frostburg-area property owner reported that they had arrived in box trucks and asked to camp on his property.
Authorities later added charges involving the alleged illegal possession and carrying of concealed and loaded firearms.
LaSota, a biological male who identifies as a woman and uses the name “Ziz,” is the founder and ideological leader of the Zizians. The group is made up of transgender vegan extremists, several of whom have elite educational backgrounds in science and mathematics. Members embraced an esoteric ideology combining leftist transgender politics, anarchism, rationalism and veganism.
Snip.
Though the state charges have been suspended, LaSota is being held on a federal detainer request on a federal indictment of being a fugitive from justice in possession of firearms and ammunition. On Tuesday, he was transferred into federal custody at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia.
Zajko, meanwhile, is awaiting extradition to Pennsylvania. She was charged in June with murdering her adoptive parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, on New Year’s Eve 2022. The case had gone cold for years before the surprise announcement by prosecutors in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
Authorities allege Zajko traveled from Vermont to her childhood home in Chester Heights on the night of her 30th birthday and participated in the execution-style killings.
Bad news for justice in Colorado: “Former Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA analyst Yvonne Missy Woods pleaded guilty to four felonies — cybercrime, perjury, attempting to influence a public official, and forgery, after facing 102 felony charges tied to misconduct in 58 cases dating back to 2008. Woods worked at CBI for 29 years, from January 1994 to November 2023, and was qualified as an expert witness more than 500 times. A routine audit in late 2023 uncovered anomalies in her work; an internal investigation found she purposefully deleted DNA data to skip required testing steps. Retesting of roughly 3,000 affected cases cost the state an estimated $11 million. Among the high-profile cases she handled was the 2003 Kobe Bryant sexual assault investigation. ”
“ICE Arrests 1,328 Illegal Aliens in DC, Virginia, Maryland in 14 Days. Of those arrested, almost 400 illegal immigrants had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, including a Salvadoran national wanted in Richmond, Virginia, on a murder warrant.”
“Other crimes included rape, sexual assault, kidnapping, DUI, robbery and attempted murder.” Also: “They also arrested members of MS-13, 18th Street Gang, and Tren de Aragua gangs.” MS-13 and Tren de Aragua we’ve covered here before. According to Wikipedia, “The 18th Street Gang, also known as Eighteen St, Barrio 18, Mara 18, or simply 18 in North America, is a multi-ethnic (largely Mexican and Central American), street gang from Los Angeles, California. It is one of the largest street gangs in Los Angeles, with 30,000–50,000 members between the United States, Mexico, and Central America.” Evidently they’re enemies with MS-13.
“Lottery Boss Appears in Court over $95 Million Scandal. Former Texas Lottery Executive Director Gary Grief faces a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity tied to the controversial 2023 jackpot.”
Former Texas Lottery Executive Director Gary Grief appeared in a Travis County courtroom Friday morning as the criminal case stemming from the controversial 2023 Lotto Texas jackpot moves forward.
Grief appeared alongside his attorney before District Judge Dayna Blazey in the 167th District Court. Prosecutors and attorneys representing the entity formerly known as the Texas Lottery Commission were also present.
Court records show Grief waived formal magistration Friday. Another hearing concerning his personal-recognizance bond was set for October 16.
Shortly after Friday’s proceedings, Travis County District Attorney José Garza formally announced that a grand jury had indicted both Grief and the now-defunct Texas Lottery Commission for abuse of official capacity.
The indictments were handed down April 21.
According to Garza’s office, the charges stem from the April 22, 2023, Lotto Texas drawing and allege that the commission, along with high-level management officials Ed Rogers and Clay Kidd, intentionally and knowingly misused government resources.
The DA’s office alleges the conduct was authorized by Grief, who was serving as the commission’s executive director at the time.
The indictment concerns the drawing in which a New Jersey-based lottery purchasing operation acquired nearly every possible number combination and won a $95 million jackpot.
Grief faces a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity involving $300,000 or more.
The whole affair stinks to high heaven, and I have to think at least some Lotto Commission employees were in on it.
“Judges Recommend Regulators Reject Proposed 765-kV Line. The Public Utility Commission must now decide whether to accept the judges’ recommendation to reject the proposed multibillion-dollar transmission line projects.” “The judges concluded the utilities [Oncor and the Lower Colorado River Authority Transmission Services Corporation] did not establish that the projects are necessary and failed to comply with notice requirements designed to give affected landowners a chance to participate before the application was filed.”
The plot thickens. “Iowa Attorney General Says She’s Taking California to the Supreme Court Over Paramount-Warner Bros.”
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird wrote in an op-ed for The Daily Wire that she is suing California for leading the charge in the lawsuit against the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger.
“California is once again trying to be the country’s regulator. And once again California is defying common sense to raise costs around the country,” Bird wrote. “That makes this a dispute between states, and the Constitution says those can only be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court.”
“Australian man faces 15 years in prison for using toy gun to win carnival prize for daughter.” He was an ex-felony prohibited from using guns, but getting busted for a carnival air rifle seems way, way excessive.
How Simon Whistler runs his YouTube channels. He outsources everything except direction and presentation, expands his winners and ruthlessly culls his losers. It’s smart business, but largely antithetical to what I watch YouTube for. (Previously.)
Weirdly enough, the animated film Lesbian Space Princess seems to be hated by everyone. See, a film with that title could be highly profitable in porn…
Trump’s winning in Iran, Russia’s losing in Ukraine, Democrats committing fraud left and right, the data center debate rages on, a crappy movie in China gain sudden popularity because it’s crappy, and Orlando PD get to wrestle an alligator.
The “rhetoric” coming from both sides of the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz has “caused considerable confusion and doubt,” CNN’s David Goldman understatedly observed. Yet, at present, “The evidence is clear,” he conceded: “Iran is losing much of its control over the critical waterway.”
One month ago, the number of commercial ships transiting through the strait via the U.S. approved route along the Omani coast was close to zero. Today, however, over 80 percent of the vessels that have made it through the strait are taking the U.S.-authorized lane. And even though the United States has not responded with kinetic force to every Iranian attack on commercial traffic in the strait, sometimes to the consternation of America’s Gulf partners, that has not dissuaded countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates’ tankers from making “dark traffic” runs on the strait.
CNN could not independently verify Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s claim that “combined oil transits through the strait and rerouted around the waterway totaled around 15 million barrels per day,” which approaches the pre-war average of 20-million barrels. But it couldn’t gainsay the experts. As one industry analyst conceded, “It increasingly looks like Iran has at least partially lost control of the strait.”
The Iranian regime is feeling the pain. As Hot Air’s Duane Patterson explained, the economic conditions on the ground inside the Islamic Republic are catastrophic. “Iran’s economy is currently experiencing around 90 percent inflation, and it turns out the worst may be yet to come,” he wrote. Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Miad Maleki concurs. “Nearly every part of Iran’s oil economy,” he wrote, “owes massive, growing sums to each other, with no real money moving through the system to pay any of it back.”
The gas lines are growing, and the petrol that Iranians are allowed to buy may soon be rationed. Iranian authorities are triaging their resources by prescheduling hours-long blackouts. The regime is ramping up executions and cracking down on dissent as the prospect of economic collapse brings with it the risk of renewed civil unrest.
Brooklyn Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher (D-50th District) wants New Yorkers to believe that walking out of a CVS with a fistful of stolen toothpaste isn’t a crime. It’s a “biological need.”
Yes, really.
Gallagher, who represents Greenpoint and other parts of northern Brooklyn, made her case Thursday at a news conference outside Manhattan Criminal Court, flanked by fellow far-left officials and activists from Court Watch NYC. The group said it monitored 360 arraignments over four days and found that more than half involved misdemeanor offenses. Gallagher used those numbers to argue shoplifters swiping basic necessities shouldn’t be prosecuted at all.
“Most of what we saw were crimes of poverty-people who are stealing things like toothpaste, people who were stealing things like, you know, soap,” Gallagher said. “And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them.”
Funny how all those films of riot never show people stealing soap and toothpaste, just flat screen TVs and Nikes. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Salman Ahmed Elmi was charged last week with three counts of aiding and abetting by swindle and five counts of aiding and abetting by false representation.
He made his first court appearance on Monday. Authorities say some of Elmi’s co-conspirators at Reva Health in Golden Valley have connections to a sex trafficking ring bust last week.
Elmi is accused of billing Medicaid for more than $1 million in services that were not provided or not eligible. Reva Health provided autism services and adult rehabilitative mental health services.
“The Minnesota Department of Human Services awarded Elmi an ‘Outstanding Refugee Award’ in 2021.” Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that “Outstanding Refugee” is an award for those that stole the most taxpayer money to give to Democrats?
FBI agents seized electronic devices from former Representative Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) at the San Francisco airport on Saturday and then raided his home in connection with an investigation into sexual assault allegations against him, according to several reports.
Federal authorities executed a search warrant at Swalwell’s home in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, law enforcement sources told CNN and the Associated Press.
The FBI declined to comment.
Swalwell resigned from Congress and suspended his campaign for California governor in April after a former staffer came forward with allegations that he had sexually assaulted her twice, including once at a hotel while he was in New York City for a charity gala in 2024.
Three other women then accused Swalwell of sexual misconduct as well. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department opened criminal investigations into Swalwell in response.
At the time, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg encouraged “survivors and anyone with knowledge of these allegations to contact our Special Victims Division.”
The reports that the FBI’s investigation into Swalwell is picking up steam comes days after the White House Transparency Task Force released FBI files indicating Swalwell previously admitted to having “physical relations” with suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang on a “handful of occasions,” providing confirmation of the public sphere’s longstanding suspicion that a sexual relationship had transpired.
Ukraine continues its war on Wildberries. “Best Wildberries Strike Yet! Koledino Near Moscow–Biggest Wildberries Hub in Russia.”
“Ukrainian forces hit at least five workshop buildings at Russia’s Kombinat Kamensky defense plant in Rostov region, penetrating several layers of air defenses from Pantsir to S-300 systems. The plant produces solid rocket fuel for Uragan, Smerch and Tornado-S MLRS, as well as other missile and aviation systems. Key workshops had anti-drone protection and were surrounded by earthworks. Several air-defense vehicles were also hit.”
The Russian fuel situation has gotten so bad that even Russian newspapers are talking about it. “As of the 16th of August, across Russia, 28.1% of petrol stations had fuel. A week before, it was 41%.” Imagine more than two thirds of stations having no gas and long lines at the ones that do.
The State Department worked with World Vision to distribute $2 billion in global health foreign assistance even though an Israeli court convicted the nonprofit’s Gaza affiliate operations manager of sending up to $50 million to Hamas in 2022. Separately, the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) provided nearly $80 million to 14 organizations linked to terrorism and extremism.
The Middle East Forum (MEF) recently reported that 14 terror-linked and extremist organizations, led by CAIR, collected nearly $80 million from HHS through the Refugee Resettlement, Health, and Mosque Renovation grants. Through this fund, the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) California chapter received the most of any Islamist group, collecting $42.2 million in funding from the HHS to provide legal and social services to Afghan refugees.
Concerning: “Chinese Spy Official Who Is Also A Trained Sniper Buys Property Overlooking White House.”
🚨CCP intel official Philip Qiu, who is trained as a SNIPER, bought an historic building overlooking the White House.
“Liberal white woman fights fascism by defacing national memorial to soldiers who died fighting Hitler.” ‘This morning, we are filing two felony charges, Depredation Against Property of the United States and Destruction of Veterans’ Memorials, in Federal District Court against Melissa L. Farris, offenses that carry penalties of up to ten years in prison.” TDS strikes again.
How is this legal? “Karen Bass brags that Los Angeles will use tax dollars to provide a 6:1 match for every dollar donated to her campaign.”
Karen Bass is very worried about losing her mayoralty to left-winger Nithya Raman, who squeaked past Spencer Pratt in the primary election due to a bunch of election shenanigans, and Bass has an interesting campaign strategy.
Using city tax dollars to fund her campaign!…
The city of Los Angeles “donates” money to Bass’s campaign in a matching program? If you give $10, the city chips in another $60? And she’s pushing this program?
Through the foreign-donation-taking ActBlue, no less.
Per the City Ethics Commission (I kid you not), the city charter allows for “public matching funds.”
Left-wing group Common Cause California brags about “strengthening” this public match fund in 2019.
The program is intended to help less-funded candidates get access to funding, but in actuality, all it does is take YOUR tax dollars to fund politicians you hate.
The Frankfurt School. You should know what it was, what it built, and why you are still living inside it.
1. The Institute for Social Research was founded in Frankfurt in 1923 and relocated to Columbia University in 1934 when Hitler came to power. The civilization they had decided to dismantle gave them refuge when another tried to kill them. They spent the next five decades producing the theoretical infrastructure for that dismantling. Western civilization itself was the problem: reason, the Enlightenment, the family, tradition, authority. Not reformed. Dismantled.
2. They called it Critical Theory – and the name is the program. Everything is to be criticized; nothing is to be built. In The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Adorno and Horkheimer argued that Western reason — the reason that produced Newton and the rule of law — contained the seeds of Auschwitz. Not that reason had been misused, but that reason itself, taken to its conclusion, produces the death camp. This was not a critique of institutions. It was an indictment of the civilization itself.
3. Adorno gave them the psychological weapon. The Authoritarian Personality (1950) classified conservatism, religious faith, patriotism, and the traditional family not as political positions but as symptoms of a proto-fascist personality. If you believe in the nation or the father’s authority, you are pre-fascist. The opponent was no longer wrong – he was sick. You don’t argue with a pathology. You treat it.
This made dialogue impossible. You don’t persuade someone who is wrong; you diagnose someone who is sick. Politics becomes therapy, and disagreement becomes pathology.
4. Marcuse gave them the political weapon. Repressive Tolerance (1965) argued that tolerating wrong ideas is itself oppression. True tolerance therefore requires suppressing intolerant ideas. The left decides which ideas are intolerant. Everyone else is silenced – not despite tolerance, but “in its name.” Censorship dressed in the vocabulary of liberation.
5. The generation that read Marcuse at Columbia, Berkeley, and Yale went on to run universities, media, foundations, NGOs, content moderation departments, and the EU regulatory apparatus. They implemented the argument sincerely because they had been taught it as philosophy. This was the Frankfurt School’s greatest achievement: it produced true believers.
6. French Theory picked up the tools and made them aesthetic. Foucault made the critique of power literary. Derrida made the critique of meaning philosophical. Deleuze made the critique of identity elegant. A political program became a cultural sensibility. You can argue with a program. A sensibility is in the air you breathe. By the time these ideas reached the American campus through the French conduit, they were no longer ideology. They were the water. The fish did not know they were wet.
7. A civilization stands on three pillars: truth exists and is accessible to reason; good is distinguishable from evil; and there is an inheritance worth transmitting. The Frankfurt School attacked all three – systematically and with considerable intellectual sophistication. It produced a generation that knows how to deconstruct and has forgotten how to build. That sees power everywhere and beauty nowhere.
The ultimate achievement was to make destruction feel like progress. Every inherited institution became suspect; every constraint became oppression; every act of preservation became reactionary. Deconstruction became the default, while construction became something that needed to justify itself.
Kurt Schlichter: “The Death of Academic Fraud Jason Arday Won’t Shut Us Up.”
Fake Professor Jason Arday was found dead in the wake of being exposed as a complete fraud, and if it were my choice, he would still be alive and suffering the humiliation that should be the result of his crimes. I would prefer that he did not likely choose to kill himself instead of facing the consequences of his actions. My preference is irrelevant. If he decided to do himself in, it’s crushing for his wife and kids, and that was a selfish, cruel, and stupid decision. But it was his decision, as was his decision to commit fraud upon fraud. I don’t celebrate his death, and his death changes nothing. We’re not going to stop rooting out the charlatans.
Of course, the entirely predictable response of the institutional left to his cowardly and apparent self-deletion has been to insist, loudly and with quivering outrage, that his death is our fault. You see, we normal people pointed out that he lied about his background, his achievements, his credentials, and his work. The fact that we did what a functioning institution should’ve done itself outraged his boosters, so these moral illiterates now invert the moral calculus to keep the exposure of academic fraud from happening again. Arday lied pathologically and endlessly, enabled by a ridiculously solicitous academia, then likely killed himself when his lies were exposed. Obviously, the villains are the people who did not lie and did not choose to end his life.
And you’ll never guess their key accusation in a million years.
Okay, you guessed it: RACISM!
Snip.
Regardless, it was entirely predictable that the left would use his unfortunate demise to try to shut us up, to place all criticism of woke charlatans off limits because the subject of the critique might decide to do something desperate. They can’t help themselves but act out irrationally, you see. The fact that this tactic deprives the minority of any agency is no shock; there’s no racist like a leftist, who considers minorities to be nothing more than political marionettes unable to control their own actions. We’re supposed to give them a pass because the targets of our criticism have no agency. It’s like that NSFW scene in Blazing Saddles where the sheriff keeps the townspeople from lynching him by sticking a gun to his head—“He’s just crazy enough to do it!” Except this time the townspeople were not trying to lynch an innocent man and didn’t back off, and he did pull the figurative trigger.
We’re not going to play their game. We’re not going to hold fire for fear of feelz. We’re not going to ignore the truth lest the liar lash out at himself or others. Sometimes the truth hurts, but the only people the truth hurts are people exposed doing something they shouldn’t be doing. The truth is more important than feelings. And the truth is more important than Arday’s life. If the choice we are presented with is that Jason Arday will go on living a lie and degrading our civilization by doing so, or that Jason Arday might hurt himself, it’s Option 2 every day of the week. We’re not going to be held hostage or intimidated or shamed into silence and, therefore, complicity.
Texas has three federally recognized Native American tribes: Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, located in the western part of the state in El Paso; the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, located near Eagle Pass along the Rio Grande; and the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, located in the eastern part of the state near Livingston.
And two of those are along the Mexican border, which means drug smuggling is a big problem.
I’m going to quote a largish chunk here just so I can tag the various companies.
In June, Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to require data centers to pay for their own electric infrastructure costs, scuttling at least one project planned for East Texas.
Then, earlier this month, Abbott asked these agencies to audit all data center projects in the process of connecting to the Texas grid. According to his directive, data centers in the pipeline must provide and verify information about their water usage; their noise, light, and traffic mitigation efforts; how they plan to obtain electricity; whether they receive taxpayer money; and the real identities of their owners.
A flurry of affirmative replies ensued, including assurances from some of the best-funded users and most prolific developers of data centers in the world.
Many of these companies have already made use of a sales tax exemption for data center equipment — a 13-year-old state law passed before the remote work boom of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) this decade propelled the industry well past the state’s expectations.
Here are the data center companies that have agreed to comply with Abbott’s standards, cross-referenced with the state’s list of companies that benefit from the tax break.
QTS Data Centers
On August 6, Virginia-based Quality Technology Services (QTS) “applauded” Abbott’s “efforts to increase transparency on power use, water and resource consumption, and community considerations associated with data center development.”
QTS data centers built after 2019 use fans rather than water for cooling, according to the company.
The company operates three facilities in Texas and has three more in the pipeline, according to its website. The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts certified one QTS facility, a 56-acre campus in Irving, to benefit from the state sales tax exemption.
Vantage Data Centers
Vantage Data Centers sent a letter of support to Abbott on August 7.
The company, based in Denver, Colorado, only lists one active data center in Texas, at an undisclosed location in Shackelford County. However, it has secured a sales tax exemption for 12 projects listed by the comptroller, all for Oracle.
Skybox
Texas-based Skybox Datacenters agreed to Abbott’s standards on August 7.
The company has built nine data centers around the state. Besides one in Wichita Falls, all are in the Dallas, Austin, and Houston metropolitan areas, according to its website. The comptroller’s list of qualifying data centers doesn’t include a project with Skybox in the name or one associated with its address at 3131 Turtle Creek Boulevard in Dallas, based on a search of the state’s franchise tax database.
Digital Realty
Digital Realty stated on August 7 that it would comply with Abbott’s standards. The Austin-based company claimed in its statement to be “the world’s largest cloud- and carrier-neutral data center platform.”
Digital Realty operates more than 300 data centers that serve companies including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia and IBM. Twelve of its 14 Texas data centers are in the Dallas area, its website shows.
Stream Data Centers
Dallas-based Stream Data Centers agreed to Abbott’s standards on August 7.
Altogether, nine Stream data centers are either active or in development across Texas, with one on the outskirts of Houston, three in San Antonio, one in Austin, and four in the Dallas area.
Mara
Mara agreed to abide by Abbott’s standards on August 7.
The Florida-based company operates a Bitcoin mining fleet, and it “colocates data centers with power sources to convert stranded energy into digital capital,” its website states.
The company name doesn’t appear on the comptroller’s list of qualifying data centers, nor do any subsidiary companies registered under the address of its Florida headquarters.
Rowan
Rowan Digital Infrastructure, another developer based in Denver, issued a press release in support of Abbott’s orders on August 7.
The company owns and operates four data centers in Texas that benefit from the sales tax exemption, including one in Temple for Meta and another in Cinco for Google.
Meta
Meta, the California-based parent company of Facebook, pledged to comply with Abbott’s standards on Monday.
Meta’s three Texas data centers are in Fort Worth, Temple, and El Paso, according to its map.
Multiple data centers owned or used by Meta benefit from the state’s sales tax exemption. One subsidiary company, Polmer LLC, owns the certified data center in Temple and occupies two other data centers on the comptroller’s list of certified projects. The El Paso facility is owned by a Meta subsidiary, Wurldwide LLC, which also makes use of the exemption.
OpenAI and Oracle
California-based company OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, agreed to comply with Abbott’s standards on Monday. Oracle, also based in California, made the same commitment on Tuesday.
OpenAI is collaborating with Oracle and SoftBank on Stargate, a $500 billion AI infrastructure project based in Abilene and funded in part by chipmaker Nvidia. Lancium, a company backed by New York-based investment firm Blackstone, is constructing the facility, according to its website.
Eleven Lancium data centers and projects appear on the comptroller’s list, spanning Fort Stockton, Turkey, Childress, and Abilene. Seven projects in Abilene are associated with Stargate, with Oracle listed as an occupant.
Core Scientific
Core Scientific issued a press release in support of Abbott’s directives on Monday.
The company, based in Miami, Florida, operates three data centers in Texas: one in Austin, one in Denton, and one in the Callahan County town of Cottonwood, according to its website.
All three benefit from the state tax exemption, the comptroller’s list shows.
Google
The California-based Big Tech titan expressed support for Abbott’s standards on Monday.
The comptroller lists Google as the owner or user of nine data centers that benefit from the sales tax exemption.
CleanSpark
Data center developer CleanSpark Inc. agreed with Abbott’s standards on Monday.
The Nevada-based company doesn’t publish a comprehensive map or list of its data center locations, but as of February, it owned two plots of land in Brazoria County and Austin County with plans to develop facilities there, according to an investor relations press release.
Neither CleanSpark nor the only Texas entity registered to its corporate address, Eagles Nest 138 LLC, appear on the comptroller’s list of data centers.
EdgeConneX
Virginia-based EdgeConneX announced support for Abbott’s standards in its Tuesday press release.
The company doesn’t specify how many discrete data centers it operates in Texas, but it’s only active in the Houston and Austin areas, according to its online map.
The state has certified two EdgeConnex projects for the tax exemption, both in the Austin area.
SB Energy
SB Energy sent Abbott a letter on August 6 expressing support for his directives and publicized it on Tuesday.
The Redwood City, California-based company is building a facility in Milam County in support of Stargate, with Orion listed as an occupant on two projects that benefit from the state sales tax exemption.
Data Center Coalition
The Data Center Coalition, a trade association that represents data center companies, expressed support for Abbott’s directives on Tuesday.
David Morens, a former senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to hiding federal records from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Morens, a senior adviser at NIAID’s Office of the Director from 2006 to 2022 under Dr. Anthony Fauci, was charged by the Department of Justice in April with five counts related to the scheme.
He agreed to a deal with federal prosecutors this week that would see him plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit offenses or to defraud the United States. The charge carries up to five years in prison.
Snip.
The indictment came after the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic found evidence that Morens had used his personal email to discuss Covid-19’s origins and National Institutes of Health grants with EcoHealth Alliance, including a terminated coronavirus grant, in an attempt to keep the communications hidden from hypothetical future FOIA requests.
The committee obtained a communication between Morens and EcoHealth President Peter Daszak in which Morens wrote, “I can either send stuff to Tony on his private gmail, or hand it to him at work or at his house. He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”
Why it was almost like their was a conspiracy of secrecy against the American people…
Abdulloi Toshpulodzoda left the Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute (NVMHI) on July 6 for an authorized 48-hour pass. He was required to return two days later, but he never did, FOX 5 reported, citing court documents.
Instead, Toshpulodzoda traveled to Washington Dulles International Airport and boarded a Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul before continuing to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, court documents show.
Snip.
FOX 5 reported that Toshpulodzoda had previously been allowed to travel to Washington, D.C., in 2024 to obtain a passport, with support from the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office.
Sorry, a what? Passport? And then they gave him a 48-hour pass? And then they were surprised that he fled the country and never came back?
Well done, everyone.
You may not be surprised to learn that it was the office of far-left Steve Descano, the prosecutor for Fairfax County, that allowed him to get the passport.
The Trump admin is suing Descano for releasing violent criminals. You may recall that Descano went viral for allowing a registered sex offender to change in the girls’ locker room at multiple HIGH SCHOOLS because the sex offender now identifies as a woman.
Very suspicious: “Bastrop City Council Holds Official Workshop 100 Miles Away from their Constituents.”
On August 7th, the Bastrop City Council conducted official workshops not in Bastrop (where one might reasonably expect), but more than one hundred miles away in Fredericksburg. The posted agenda lists the location as the John Wm. Klein Meeting Room at 115 N. Crockett Street in Fredericksburg, roughly a two-hour drive from the city those officials were elected to serve.
And no, these were not informal “retreats” for city council members to relax and blow off steam. These were formal City Council workshops covering the very decisions that hit taxpayer’s wallets and daily lives hardest: the city budget, setting the tax rate, Hotel Occupancy Taxes, capital projects, the Master Transportation Plan (including an East/West connection north of Highway 71), water and wastewater planning, street projects, and “Future Goals” that include a recreation center, expanded fire and police service, data center policies, and Legislative “advocacy.” An extensive list of hot-button issues all to be discussed far away from their constituents.
State Rep. Stan Gerdes (R-Smithville), whose district includes Bastrop, correctly called out the problem: “The City of Bastrop is holding a City Council meeting hours away in Fredericksburg, making it nearly impossible for the people they represent to attend and participate.” He noted the agenda’s weight on budget, tax rate, data centers, and surveillance technology and announced plans to file legislation requiring city council meetings to be held inside the city they serve so residents can actually show up, speak, and hold officials accountable.
Security camera company Flock Safety has announced changes to its privacy safeguards amid public opposition to use of the devices and concerns about law enforcement abuse.
However, U.S. Rep. Keith Self (R–McKinney) told Texas Scorecard that although these changes are welcome, Flock is obviously “trying to gain acceptance and put lipstick on a pig amid the intense pushback they have received from Americans across the nation who are rightfully concerned about their privacy.”
“The bottom line is Americans do not want to be spied on, and they reject the surveillance state operating in America,” said Self. “The Fourth Amendment is not a suggestion. Federal and state legislation are still needed to ensure the government cannot access this data without a warrant—and that taxpayer dollars are not spent purchasing or installing this invasive spyware. That’s why Congress needs to pass my bill, the PRIVACY Act.”
Self filed the PRIVACY Act last month. It would require federal law enforcement to obtain official warrants before accessing or querying data collected by state and local systems, including automated license plate readers.
Powered by artificial intelligence, Flock cameras have been a hotly debated topic across the U.S., with concerned Texans requesting that state lawmakers create guardrails for the technology during the upcoming legislative session.
Since law enforcement officials do not need a warrant to access the Flock automated license plate reader (ALPR) database, citizens are raising concerns about potential Fourth Amendment violations.
Among the technology updates is a new default setting of 7-day data retention instead of the previous 30 days. This change is based on Flock’s analysis that all searches “without a full plate are done within a week.”
The Critical Drinker/Gamer covers a hacker group penetration of Rockstar games, evidently including full playable source code of the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6. They’re even threatening to release the ending if Rockstar don’t promise to eschew the greedy enshitification of games (like ending physical media) that’s now standard practice in the industry.
Niu Lai is a sleeper hit in China, mainly because the animation is so bad, something that might have been a 3D animation demo reel in 1994. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
In news that may be of interest only to me, both BattleSwarm and Futuramen had huge upticks in Views this week, at least ten times normal traffic, though a smaller uptick in unique Visitors, and I notice no single post generating such traffic. I can only assume some AI scanned the entirety of the site.
“DeSantis Explains To Newsom Secret To Counting Ballots In One Night Is Not Committing Fraud.”
“Kentucky Derby Convenes Committee To Determine What Is A Horse.”
Finally, an SPLC arrest, Iran is broker than broke, a crazy commie loses despite a huge poll lead, more Russian Wildberries, ships, and conveys blow up, more of that voting fraud that never happens, and Israel dirtnaps more Hamas scumbags.
Authorities in California arrested Heidi Beirich, a former chief financial officer (CFO) at the Southern Poverty Law Center, on fraud charges.
The indictment alleges Beirich helped funnel money to white supremacist groups through informants. She also supposedly had a romantic relationship with one of them.
From CNN:
The woman, Heidi Beirich, previously ran the SPLC’s project tracking hate groups in the US and allegedly “oversaw payments of donors’ money” to people inside of these hate groups, according to the indictment. Prosecutors say she shared a bank account with one of those sources, which included funds from the SPLC’s payments.
“I believe she was part of the effort to open bank accounts in completely fictitious companies’ names and make payments to individuals for reasons that that were not accurate as as described,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a news conference Wednesday. “This is exactly what we said would happen in a case like this, which is that our investigators and the US attorneys and the agents working the case will can keep on working it even after the initial indictment.”
Oh yeah, Blanche was confirmed as Attorney General. Maybe should have had a link on that, but, eh.
The grand jury indictment against the SPLC came down in April 2026, including 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
“In order to covertly pay the individuals, the SPLC opened bank accounts connected to a series of fictitious entities,” the DOJ wrote in a press release. “The covert nature of the accounts allowed the SPLC to disguise the true nature, source, ownership, and control of the fraudulently obtained donated money the SPLC paid the individuals. In order to keep the scheme going, the SPLC made a series of false statements related to the operation of the accounts.”
Beirich is “Employee-2” in the indictment, who worked as SPLC’s director of intelligence between 2012 and 2019.
SPLC said America had a racism problem. It did. It was the SPLC…
Not a whole lot of kinetic news out of Iran this week, but there are additional signs that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s economy is cracking.
Despite the bluster from Iranian officials on social media, it should come as no surprise that the country is not doing well economically. From the beginning of the conflict to current day, Iran has been dealt an estimated $270 billion to $300 billion in total damage due to a steady barrage of strikes, including numerous infrastructure targets from bridges, highways, railways, airports, etc.
The three-month-long US blockade on Iran’s oil exports have also taken a toll, with national oil output dropping from 2.2 million bpd to less than 300,000 bpd. It is likely that there has been some long term damage to the regime’s oil wells and they have lost approximately $6 billion in oil revenues so far.
With a general information blackout in place, getting a proper estimation of the damages can be difficult. However, in recent months many Iranian leaders and media sources have indicated a dangerous shift in the stability of the country. The situation has become so volatile that citizens are reportedly turning to theft in order to get their hands on basic necessities including food.
Iranian newspaper Jahan-e Sanat has reported increased theft of basic groceries over recent months, with store workers linking the trend to rising poverty. Related reports say meat is in short supply, there is reduced consumption of staples, subsidy shortfalls, and broader poverty pressures.
Analysts note that while full state collapse or famine has not yet occurred, the combination of high food inflation, currency weakness and job losses is placing severe strain on households. Iran’s President, Masoud Pezeshkian, seemed to confirm the decline last week when he noted that the country was facing economic “difficulties and problems,” while claiming the enemy was trying to provoke protests.
At Iran’s 33rd Conference on Monetary and Banking Policies (around June 2026), he questioned why people wake up to find their purchasing power has fallen and stated there are “hundreds of ways to overcome the economic impasse.” He noted that policymakers take people’s money and “return it with reduced value.”
Central Bank Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati presented a recovery roadmap and acknowledged an ongoing GDP contraction. He stated that “the combination of war and cruel sanctions has posed serious challenges to the country’s economy. Most importantly, people’s livelihoods have been severely affected because various sectors of the economy have been impacted by sanctions.”
He also cited inflation at around 53%, which appears to be a underestimation of the real currency destruction taking place.
Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani has discussed infrastructure damage (e.g., bridges, tunnels, gas and electricity capacity losses), adjustments to gasoline rations, and challenges with subsidy payments disrupted by banking issues or cyberattacks.
These admissions are often wrapped in claims of resiliency despite the crisis, but the biggest danger (inflation) has yet to fully play out. SCI data for the Persian month of Khordad (ending ~June 21, 2026) showed overall year-on-year inflation of 88.6% (up from pre-escalation levels around 50%). Food inflation reached 134%, with oils/fats at 278%, red meat/poultry at 178%, and bread/cereals at nearly 139%.
The rial hit record lows of around 1.5–1.9 million per USD at various points during the war. This has amplified import costs and eroded purchasing power.
Crippling infrastructure damage and currency devaluation might help to explain Iran’s desperate insistence on charging tolls in the Strait of Hormuz. If their oil industry is facing a multi-year setback and damage to infrastructure is extensive, tolls on shipping through the strait may be their only source of economic recovery.
There seems to be just enough juice left in the Corrupt Wing of the Democrat Party to rise up and defeat the very worst candidates of the insane wing, as Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong lost.
Yesterday, faced with a potential gubernatorial nominee who hates a bunch of American holidays, Wisconsin Democrats pulled it together and got just enough votes to nominate Milwaukee County executive David Crowley instead of the DSA candidate, Francesca Hong. As of this writing, Crowley has a bit more than 313,000 votes, and Hong has a bit more than 310,000. The Associated Press called Crowley the winner at 2:34 a.m. local time.
Keep in mind, recent polling had Hong with a lead of 18 to 29 percentage points.
7 months ago Francesca Hong voted against a bill that made it illegal for teachers to groom their students for sexual purposes
Here’s what happened: A 30-year-old teacher messaged a 13-year-old student of his every day for six months and talked about how he wanted them to be together, she had a nice body, and he was jealous when she talked to other boys. He also sent her pictures of himself lying shirtless in bed
So the cops arrested him but when they went to charge him, they realized nothing he did was actually illegal. They never made sexual contact and no pictures were exchanged that were explicit enough to qualify under Wisconsin state law. This guy was actively trying to rape a 13-year-old student and there was no law forbidding his conduct
He wound up being charged with a bunch of disturbing the peace charges and only spent six months in prison for spending half a year abusing his authority as a teacher to manipulate a 13-year-old girl into having sex with him. He is not a convicted felon – since all the charges were misdemeanors – and is not on the sex offender registry
The Wisconsin State Assembly responded to this by drafting a bipartisan bill that made it a felony to engage in any course of conduct clearly and obviously intended seduce or lure a child into engaging in sexual acts or exchanging illicit images. It passed 193-6 and was signed into law by the Democratic governor. Francesca Hong voted no.
4 months later the first person was charged under the new law. He was 36-year-old man who met a developmentally disabled 16-year-old in a public park when she was 13 and spent the next three years trying to manipulate her into running away from home so he could make her his live-in sex slave.
To recap: Earlier *this very year* Franesca Hong was one of only six people to vote against a bill that made it illegal to take affirmative action designed to lure a minor into sexual acts and the very first person the bill Hong voted against was used to arrest was a guy who tried to rape an underage girl with Down Syndrome
Marxist streamer Hasan Piker has emerged as an increasingly visible, if unofficial, spokesman for the Democratic Socialists of America’s rapidly expanding political action network. He campaigned for Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong while cultivating close ties with socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
From an electoral-risk perspective, Piker is becoming a liability for Democrats. His far-left, anti-American rhetoric provides Republicans with what we called “a gift” last week. Even Hillary Clinton warned on Friday that the GOP’s “anti-communist messaging is very effective.”
Piker calls on his followers to “kill capitalists”:
Hasan Piker calls on his followers to kill capitalists:
“Yeah kill them! KiII those motherfuckers and murder those motherfuckers in the streets. Let the streets soak in their fucking red capitalist blood, dude.”
Piker: “We want more immigrants to come into your countries and then they’re gonna f**k your sisters and then your daughters. We’re here to destroy the White Race, Bitch.”
Hasan Piker says he wants to FLOOD illegals into the United States so they can "f*ck your sisters and daughters" to "destroy the white race"
I am demanding the Democratic Party voice PUBLICLY that they denounce Hasan Piker's comments.
A federal appeals court has delivered another victory for Texas’ landmark 2021 election integrity law—the same legislation that prompted Democrat lawmakers to flee the state in an unsuccessful attempt to block its passage.
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday reversed a lower court ruling that blocked nine provisions of Senate Bill 1, including requirements related to voter identification for mail ballots and assistance provided to voters.
The three-judge panel sharply criticized the lower court’s handling of challenges to the law.
“In short, we have been playing an exhausting game of Whac-A-Mole to correct the district court’s mishandling of this case,” Judge Andrew Oldham wrote after recounting a series of previous Fifth Circuit decisions reversing or staying rulings against SB 1.
Oldham opened the opinion with an equally forceful defense of mail-in voting safeguards.
“It has long been established that mail-in ballots are prone to fraud,” wrote Oldham, adding that voting by mail “jeopardizes election integrity and democracy itself.”
Passed by the Legislature in 2021, SB 1 established new safeguards, including requiring voters casting ballots by mail to provide an identification number or Social Security number that matches state records.
The law also established procedures for voters to correct defective mail ballots and imposed requirements on individuals assisting voters, including an oath that they did not coerce or intimidate the voter and disclosure of their relationship to the voter.
The legislation became the centerpiece of a months-long political battle at the Texas Capitol.
Democrat lawmakers first broke quorum near the end of the 2021 regular legislative session to kill an earlier version of the election legislation. When Gov. Greg Abbott called lawmakers back into a special session, more than 50 House Democrats left Texas for Washington, D.C., again denying the chamber a quorum.
The effort ultimately failed, and lawmakers returned to Austin. SB 1 was subsequently approved by the Legislature and signed into law by Abbott.
The decision is the latest in a series of Fifth Circuit victories for the state over challenges to SB 1.
In 2025, the appeals court reversed separate permanent injunctions against provisions of the law challenged under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the latter ruling in June.
Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit also reversed another permanent injunction against SB 1 provisions challenged under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) unsealed a two-count indictment charging 11 individuals for orchestrating a massive, decade-long marriage fraud network that arranged over 1,000 sham marriages.
Federal prosecutors described the operation as one of the largest marriage fraud prosecutions in U.S. history, spanning “from 2016 through July 2026 and generating tens of millions of dollars in illegal revenue.”
The criminal scheme primarily aimed to secure fraudulent green cards and lawful permanent residency for foreign nationals, predominantly citizens of the People’s Republic of China, the DOJ noted.
According to the 21-page indictment unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the defendants marketed their services through social media, word of mouth and targeted advertising.
Foreigners reportedly paid the enterprise up to $100,000 each to facilitate a fake marriage and process green card applications. In turn, the network recruited U.S. citizens to act as spouses, paying them up to $30,000 per arrangement, while recruiters pocketed commissions of around $5,000 for every participant enrolled.
Federal officials explained further how the syndicate functioned as a “full-service” operation designed to systematically evade federal immigration checks. Facilitators hired officiants and photographers, staged wedding ceremonies — sometimes at local restaurants where participants wore traditional attire to fabricate authenticity — and generated fake documentation.
Ukraine hits “multiple Black Sea Fleet ships at Novorossiysk, including a Project 22160 patrol ship, a Kilo-class submarine, and the Admiral Makarov, an Admiral Grigorovich class frigate, as well as grain export terminal facilities.
Ukraine destroys a train carrying North Korean ballistic missiles some 6,000 miles away on the Transiberian Railroad. Depending on where on the Transiberian Railroad it was hit, that could put a real crimp on Russian logistics coming from China, one of its last lifelines.
Russian oil refinery 6,500km away from Ukraine goes up in flames, but it probably wasn’t a Ukraine strike.
That thing that never happens happened again. “Non-citizen sex offender given green light to vote by Dearborn poll officials.”
OMG [O’Keefe Media Group]’s undercover journalists investigated two Michigan registered voters identified as non-U.S. citizens in federal court and DHS records. One of them, Afshin Masheli, is identified in federal court records as an Iranian national and non-U.S. citizen. DHS has previously featured Masheli on its publicly released “Worst of the Worst” list, which highlights noncitizens arrested by ICE for serious criminal offenses. According to United States District Court records, Masheli is a registered sex offender.
OMG proved that at Masheli’s assigned polling location, election workers confirmed a voter registration under his name appeared in the poll book and stated that a registered voter listed there could cast a ballot. Our undercover journalist spoke to Afshin Masheli himself and Masheli said he planned to vote later that day.
Our investigation also identified another registered voter, Fazlollah Haritash, whose federal records identify him as a non-U.S. citizen. Public court records and Michigan’s public sex offender registry showing the criminal convictions, and the registry lists him as incarcerated. At the polling location associated with Fazlollah Haritash’s voter registration, an election worker confirmed that a voter registration under his name appeared on Michigan’s voter rolls.
More tax incentives to hire foreigners over Americans. “Employers Using J1 Student Visas for Seasonal Work Pay NO Social Security Taxes.”
When a company hires J1 student temporary or season employees, they do not have to pay the 7.5% FICA or Social Security tax on the wages.
If a company hires a seasonal American student, they have to pay the 7.5%. If the company hires a foreign student, they don’t. This creates a perverse incentive for private equity firms, companies or corporations to hire foreign seasonal workers…
Apparently, this is now the common approach within the hospitality industry to save money and increase profit from payrolls. Unfortunately, this approach puts young Americans at a disadvantage when seeking summer or short-term seasonal employment.
For fiscal Year 2025: The U.S. State Department processed 506,142 applications and successfully issued 451,803 J-1 visas.
Among the recent criminal sentencings and convictions:
— Jacob Daniel Terrazas, 31, of Paramount, Calif., was sentenced July 22 to ten months in federal prison “for throwing chunks of cinderblock at Border Patrol agents and injuring one of them during a protest that turned violent,” according to a Justice Department press release. Terrazas pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of simple assault on a federal officer.
— Yachua Mauricio Flores, 23, a Mexican illegal immigrant living in Los Angeles, was sentenced August 3 to 37 months in federal prison “for pouring two bottles of lighter fluid onto a burning California Highway Patrol (CHP) vehicle and throwing an electric scooter over a freeway overpass near officers during an anti‑immigration law enforcement riot in a downtown Los Angeles,” according to a Justice Department press release.
— Ismael Vega, 42, from Los Angeles, was sentenced July 27 to 37 months in federal prison “for throwing rocks and ignited debris at California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers trapped underneath a downtown Los Angeles freeway overpass … during a violent anti-immigration law enforcement protest last year,” according to a Justice Department press release. Vega pleaded guilty to one count of obstructing, impeding, and interfering with law enforcement during a civil disorder.
On Friday, the IDF disclosed the recent elimination of Hamas company commander Muhammad Mushtaha, who committed atrocities on October 7, 2023, and kept several Israelis in captivity. “The IDF now confirms the elimination of the terrorist Muhammad Bassam Muhammad Mushtaha, who was struck two weeks ago in the northern Gaza Strip,” the military said in a statement on Friday. “Muhammad Mushtaha served as a company commander in the Shati’ Battalion in the Hamas terrorist organization׳s military wing.”
Snip.
On Thursday, an Israeli airstrike killed another Hamas commander who took part in the October 7 Massacre. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) “struck in the area of Gaza City and eliminated the terrorist Jamal Mahmoud Abu Kamil, a commander in the Hamas terrorist organization who infiltrated Israeli territory during the October 7th Massacre,” the IDF announced on Friday. ”
From Dwight comes the heartwarming story of Gina LaPlaca, former mayor of Lumberton Township in New Jersey, who, with her husband Jason Carty, was indicted for voting fraud, namely collecting fraudulent signatures to compete in a Democrat primary…only to come in third of three.
Brandon Herrera and Wes Virdell buy silencers. “GOA Members to Make History with First Suppressor Transfers Without NFA Registration Since 1934.”
Ann Coulter: “Google AI will NOT cite The Daily Mail.” Specifically, Google will not find a 2013 Daily Mail article about Trayvon Martin and drug use, even if you search for the exact name of the article. The Ministry of Truth is hard at work hiding those pesky facts from you. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Well: “Jason Arday, ex-Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism, found dead in UK week after investigation launched.” (Previously.) (Hat tip: Dwight.)
One of the videos showed an alleged assault that was reported on July 30. The video appeared to show [Diquan] Hunt punch a woman on a sidewalk off East Boulevard in Charlotte’s South End before running away.
The person suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries. It was not immediately clear why Hunt punched her, but it does appear to be random.
In the video, it appears you can hear Hunt say to a woman passing by, ‘Don’t wave to me.’ Hunt appeared to hit the woman and can be seen standing over her, screaming at her and asking her, ‘You still talking?’
Hunt was taken to a local medical facility for treatment. He will be transferred into the custody of the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office once he is released and charged with assault with a deadly weapon.
Bonus: “This is Hunt’s tenth arrest since 2023.” Of course Mecklenburg County DA Spencer Merriweather is a Democrat…
Bad guy threatens gas station clerk after being denied alcohol because he didn’t have ID. Good guy with gun: DELETED. Bonus: Perp’s name: “Ofa’tangikivaha Angilau (a classic Utah name right there).”
“Bitcoin Red Team Says AI Is Finding Critical Exploits Across Core Projects. A volunteer security effort says it has scanned 150 Bitcoin repositories, disclosed more than a dozen vulnerabilities, and is building an open-source AI platform to automate software security reviews.”
Royce White, the Rockets draftee turned Republican congressional candidate has declared for the WNBA, along with ex-NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom. How far is the WNBA willing to go to tie itself into knots rather than offend the radical left by just declaring that no one with XY chromosomes can play in the WNBA?
I have a whole lot of links saved up to do a Talarico round-up of all his various stupidities and attempts to walk back his social justice activism that I haven’t gotten around to posting yet. In the meantime, Texas Scorecard’s Sara Gonzales has her own roundup of Talarico trying to scrub his radical past. “But the Internet is forever.”
“Texas Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico is running from his past because he knows he can’t get elected in Texas if he tells the truth. So much so that he scrubbed his website when he announced his Senate run to remove references to trans kids.”
“There also was a place where he bragged about being committed to bold progressive legislation no matter how long it takes. Like it was right there front and center in his website. And then, curiously, in early September 2025, as he was announcing his Senate run, these sentences just poof, vanished out of nowhere.”
“It says the biggest divide in this country is not left to right, but top versus bottom. [snorts] Which first of all, I mean, the jokes write themselves, right? When you’re dealing with someone like James Talarico, who we all have some questions about his masculinity, is he like batting for the other team?”
“More importantly, the word progressive completely vanished from the website. You can’t find it.”
“Because the James Talarico is running today in 2026 is a total fraud. He is pretending to be something that he is not in order to trick Texans into electing him.”
“He is not just some regular old moderate just fighting back against the man. That’s not him. He is a radical, radical leftist.”
“We know that James Talarico, for instance, has never met a trans kid he doesn’t like. Actually, he’s seemingly obsessed with trans kids. But what you may not know, speaking of being a radical leftist, is that he also headlined a 2021 Pride event in Taylor, Texas with an 11-year-old drag queen that goes by the name Queen Kiki.”
“James Talarico is a big supporter of grown men dressed as women dancing provocatively in front of young children. James is also a big fan of sterilizing children. Actually, and I want to play you here. He is in his own words complaining that Texas Republicans passed SB14, which banned the trans surgeries for children.”
Talarico: “I think if I’m thinking through the three most dangerous LGBTQ, um, attack bills that made it through, I would say the most dangerous is SB14, which would deny many times life saving health care from our trans youth in Texas.” And by “life-saving” he means “gender mutilating.” He also opposed the bills banning drag shows for children and porn in school libraries.
“According to James Talarico, children should just have access to all of these gay books that talk about how, you know, uh, gay couples are like going down on each other performing oral sex.”
I’m skipping over bits about Talarico’s radical leftwing church since we covered that here.
“They’re housing illegal aliens to hide them from the federal law enforcement. They are obstructing. They are hiding illegals. They are hiding criminals from federal law enforcement so that they can’t get deported. That’s not a church, guys. That is a radical leftist cult.”
“He is a very dangerous radical.”
She didn’t even cover his assertion there being six genders and God being non-binary, or bragging about how his campaign was vegan…
Various leftists, including Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, are now claiming that you can’t drag them for past statements because “Woke 1 was crazy.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) debuted a new phrase on Sunday meant to distinguish the current rise of socialism in the Democratic Party from the “woke” cultural peak of 2020 that featured calls from Democrats to defund the police during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While speaking with Jonathan Karl on ABC’s This Week, the prominent socialist and potential 2028 presidential candidate was asked about Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong’s prior support for abolishing prisons and canceling Thanksgiving.
“My understanding is that Francesca Hong has made clear her present stances to her electorate,” she said before confirming to Karl that Hong has “moved away from” these positions. “And I have a local city councilman who has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’ and I think that what’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.”
To which I can only reply: No. Fucking. Way.
“You can’t ding us for our past madness, you can only believe the obvious lies we’re dispensing now.”
You don’t get to back away from your past lunatic statements because you still believe in all that bullshit.
There was no “Woke 1.0,” just a continuous racialist, anti-Western Civilization, anti-rational, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-Republican movement whose roots stretch back into the Comintern, Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, carried forward into the Port Huron Statement, the Weather Underground, the campus radicals of the 1960s and their long march through academia and other western institutions, special campus victimhood identity politics carve-out departments for blacks, Hispanics, radical feminists and “Queer Theory,” into the political correctness of the 1980s that blossomed into the poisonous flowers of social justice, radical transsexism, Palestinian- and Islamo-felia and anti-Israel animus that has turned into full-blown antisemitism, and a radical fringe in the Democrat Party that metastasized to its core under Obama and President Autopen. AOC’s Democratic Socialists of America and their fellow-travelers were all on-board with their lunacy every step of the way.
And that lunacy included a cancel culture that sought to debank, deplatform and disemploy anyone bucking its ideological dictates, all of which had achieved a crazy level of hatred and groupthink long before the madness of 2020. That bumped the social justice hubris up another notch when The Science™ made it a a moral imperative to keep normies locked in their homes and firing them for refusing a vaccine while prominent Democrats felt free to visit the expensive restaurants and salons of their choice. Then everything turned on a dime when #BlackLivesMatter rioted over a dead criminal, and the social justice sorts demanded that we “defund the police” so they could get their sticky fingers on money going to law enforcement while Soros-backed DAs did everything in their power to get criminals back on the street to continue victimizing law-abiding citizens. And then President Autopen threw open the borders to let tens of millions of illegal aliens flood into the country.
And throughout it all, the SJW/DSA types were onboard with all of it, every step of the way. There was no “woke 1.0,” there was only the same madness taking on new forms.
You didn’t regret it then and you don’t regret it now, you only regret getting caught. You thought your control of the Democrat Party, the mainstream media and the halls of academia would let you impose policies opposed by 85% of Americans by force majure, that the moral purity of your virtue signaling would let you sweep all before you as inevitable historical processes validated your Will to Power clothed in the triumphalist language of “the moral arc of history.”
It didn’t happen that way.
The Tea Party happened. Then Trump happened, The Mule derailing your inevitable, preordained triumph. Then your hand-picked candidates like Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams came up short, keeping you from cementing the Democrat voting fraud machine in those two states. Then Elon Musk bought Twitter, and your attempt to lock anyone opposed to social justice lunacy out of the public square failed. Then followed the Twitter Files, revealing for all the extent to which you went to establish a global censorship regime to silence political opposition. You were happy to have a boot stamp on a human face forever, as long as you were the one wearing it.
No, you don’t get to just go “Whoopsie! Mistakes were made!” and expect to waltz away from your unpopular bullshit without any of it sticking to you, especially now that the DSA has thrown the mask off and gone full Commie, admitting it wants to destroy America’s constitutional government of ordered liberty by getting rid of the Electoral College, the Senate, and a independent President and Supreme Court.
No, you don’t get any grace for the bullshit you spewed, especially since you used that bullshit to destroy people for refusing to bend the knee to your sick religion, from people fired for refusing to use your idiotic pronouns to California still forcing men into women’s prisons.
You don’t regret any of the pain you inflicted on normies, you only regret not getting to inflict more of it. You still view yourself as the natural anointed rulers of those benighted rubes in JesusLand.
You don’t get forgiveness as long as you continue trying to force social justice and communism down America’s throat.
More Iran War spin cycle, Ukraine hits more oil refineries and Wildberries, more welfare state fraud, more Fauci follies, more Democrats behaving badly, and one anime lover does something really, really stupid.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
(Note: Somehow an unfinished version of this got published and one of Bluehost’s little timeouts temporarily prevented me from unpublishing it…)
I should have a link on Iran here, but as far as I can tell it’s the same cycle: 1. Iran attacks neighbors or a ship transiting the Strait of Hormuz, 2. U.S. pounds the snot out of them, 3. President Trump announces we’re close to a deal with Iran, 4. Iran announces usual lies (deal gives them complete control over the strait, U.S. promises to hand them a big pile of money, President Trump promises to pray to Mecca five times a day, etc.). Set spin cycle to repeat next week.
Why go to war with Iran now? When we have so many problems to solve — still — at home, and with the midterms looming?
If you just said “Because Israel” go and sit down. No, sit ALL THE WAY DOWN. And stay there, quietly, while the adults talk. You’ve been sold a fable by people who would love to split up that alliance in order to destroy both countries piecemeal. And yes, a lot of the people in this country you trust are in the pay of those people or alternately truly vulnerable to manipulation.
Yes, Israel is at war and has been at war. Not out of some desire of being a local hegemon — after all, they gave back a lot of territory in the early 2000s in the hope of buying peace for their people for all the good it did them — but because they would like to survive. And even then, they were soft-handed to the point of insanity until they got the wake up call of 10/7. Not responding to that wake up call would have been suicidal. Apparently they are not that. This makes them neither an evil scheming nation nor manipulators of US politics. Go sit all the way down, and think shame you allowed the likes of China and Russia and dissatisfied Arab elements (now their leadership is becoming marginally saner) to manipulate you.
However, our war with Iran has nothing to do with Israel except insofar as Israel has provided able support in it, taking down the “Hamas fighters” Iran would have sent against us when we moved against Iran.
And if you think that Trump just up one morning and decided to go to war with Iran because he’s just that crazy, you have the president completely wrong. He had a public persona that is a little unpredictable. This I think is intentional just as I think Reagan’s “the bombing will now begin” was “accidentally open mike.” If you believe that, I have some bridges to sell you. They might be underwater, but great property.
Trump’s philosophy of government is “Make money, not war.” And I don’t mean making money for himself, though setting the US as the leader of the economic world definitely will end up in his children and grandchildren being richer. And ours too, think on. What I mean is that he uses money the way other presidents used war. He makes it profitable to be on good terms with the US, rather than beating people into not hurting us. By and large, it works.
Until you come to something like Iran. An “Islamic Republic” established with heavy propping by the USSR and still used as a proxy by Russia (and China. And every bad actor who wanted to use them.)
None of which would be an immediate problem, necessitating war. The world is full of crazy little countries, armed to the teeth and with evil intentions towards everyone starting with their own people.
Except for three things: 1- Iran’s evil intent is real and proactive. They declared war on us (And yes, Israel, but remember Israel is “little Satan” to our “Big Satan.”) They’re not just squatting on their territory, murdering their own people and muttering “touch me and you’ll die.” They actively want to eliminate us. (And Israel, but honestly, mostly us.) They believe a final, massive war, will bring about their end times and paradise for the faithful. And they are, yes, sincerely religious. At least the leadership. 2-They either had a nuke, or were very close to having one, and as we have learned through their bombing every one and their cousins, they actually and for real had delivery means. To the US? who knows? And anyway, with a nuke and open borders, there are many means of delivery. 3- Pallets of cash given to them by Obama, which greatly accelerated the nuclear program. Which we supposedly have maybe thoroughly degraded. Maybe. Apparently the terrain and capacity of the Iranians…. it’s difficult to ascertain that, or to be sure they won’t be up to their games next week absent thorough regime change.
In other words, our war with Iran right now is very simple: Because the enemy gets a vote. And so do others who would love to be the enemy if we give them an opening and who are now at BEST “adversaries”.
Because if we give in to the “peace at all costs” people we’ll likely go back in a year or two. And if two who knows who’ll be in charge or what they’ll use “war time emergency” to do. Remember the covidiocy?
Now imagine that we have Kamala, or G-d forbid AOC in charge when Iran hits NYC or Chicago, or Denver, or any of our big cities. Or three or four of them.
Imagine millions dead, and the US suddenly on a war footing. Imagine what a “Democratic socialist” would do in an environment 10 times what the post 9/11 fervor was, when speaking out against war is political and perhaps physical suicide. Or, you know, you don’t have to imagine. Go and study the unvarnished presidencies of Woodrow Wilson or FDR and you’ll KNOW.
Beyond the fact that China is running out of time to make with aggression. Their demographics don’t support a long wait to go to war with us. They must do it soon. But to do it now would be suicide. To do it after Iran hits us with a nuke and we’re in disarray (particularly, if G-d forbid we have a Democrat in charge.) … golden opportunity. (And don’t tell me there’s no chance of a democrat in 2028. The right is riven by discord being sown by enemies domestic and foreign, and a lot of duckies on the right fall for it every single time.)
THAT is why we are at war with Iran now. And why Trump is doing it (he said he couldn’t risk a president he couldn’t be sure of facing this, remember?) right now, regardless of political price. Because undoing the damage that Obama wrought is essential if we are to thrive or even — just — to survive as a nation.
The DOJ Fraud Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office, and Pennsylvania Attorney General today announced criminal charges against 19 defendants, including owners and employees of home care companies, for their alleged participation in various fraud schemes involving over four million dollars in claims to Medicare and Medicaid.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General also announced a plea agreement involving the final defendant in a previously-charged 21 defendant case involving over $1.7 million in claims.
Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, U.S. Attorney David Metcalf for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and senior federal and state officials hold a press conference announcing a significant health care fraud takedown and a new Anti-Fraud Initiative in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Commie Jihadi wins. “Abdul El-Sayed Wins Michigan Democratic Senate Primary. With 99% of the votes counted, El-Sayed defeated Haley Stevens 48.5% to 47.5% (14,893 votes).”
The Associated Press called the Michigan Democratic primary for socialist and anti-Israel candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
With 99% of the votes counted, El-Sayed defeated Haley Stevens 48.5% to 47.5% (14,893 votes).
El-Sayed’s victory is a major defeat for the Democratic establishment.
Members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) or endorsed by the socialists have won House primaries in Colorado and New York. Most Democrats brushed aside concerns that the socialists have started taking over the party despite those victories.
Will the Democrat party change its position now that El-Sayed won a statewide primary?
El-Sayed loves to hang out with far-left streamer Hasan Piker, who thinks America deserved 9/11.
The socialist claimed he never said he wanted to defund the police, but CNN dug up a 2020 interview where he said, “I believe we do need to defund the police.” People even discovered El-Sayed deleting past social media posts with anti-police rhetoric.
He also holds the usual socialist ideas: High taxes, Medicare for All, abolish ICE, open borders, etc.
Of course, El-Sayed hates Israel and AIPAC. He admitted that he struggles “with the question of whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state.”
El-Sayed wouldn’t say anything about Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death because many Muslims in the state are sad.
Given that this and many other clips of El-Sayed have gone viral since he won the primary earlier this week, it might be dawning on Piker that the Islamic vote in Dearborn isn’t going to be enough to carry a statewide election.
Today on X, he was furious again, but this time in his attempt to backpedal from one of his most infamous statements: that America ‘deserved’ 9/11.
this is unbelievably disingenuous, I'VE personally apologized for the words that i used BACK IN 2019. every candidate i've appeared alongside has done this. we all know this is a cynical way to justify associating the 1st muslim senate candidate with "islamic style terrorism" https://t.co/PqCAgXPJbw
Oh yes, because 2019 was so long ago, and saying that “America deserved 9/11” was so uncontroversial back in those dim, misty days of 2019. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Meta fined $567 million for harming the mental health of kids. And that was just in New Mexico…
“Huge Drone Strike on Petrochemical Plant and Ufa Oil Refinery: Huge Fire. [I]n Nizhnekamsk, Tatarstan, a massive fire is seen in the industrial zone of Nizhnekamskneftekhim after an explosion, probably due to a system overload after a series of UAV attacks on the industrial zone. ”
The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on Thursday advanced a resolution to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress.
The eight-to-five party line vote came in response to Fauci repeatedly invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at a hearing last week to avoid Republicans’ questions regarding diary entries previously released by the committee. Those documents revealed the former head of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases gave the lab-leak hypothesis for the origin of the coronavirus more credit in private than he did in public at the beginning of the pandemic.
Something is at war with us, us being regular citizens who want things to work and to be left alone. We’re slow to react because we think in terms of nations. Our enemies are mafias that wear governments like a cloak to defeat our eyes and fly our flags to disarm our minds. So I think the way to think about Anthony Fauci sitting there in front of this committee today is we are governed by mafias. He is a made man. I think he’s just clearly a made man. And that means we don’t have the ability to touch him.”
This could get spicy: “Paxton Investigates Financial Ties Behind Childhood Vaccine Recommendations. The attorney general is seeking information about how the nation’s largest pediatric group develops its vaccine guidance.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating how a pediatricians’ association determines its vaccine recommendations and whether financial incentives have influenced its guidance.
Founded in 1930, the American Academy of Pediatrics has helped shape childhood vaccination recommendations nationwide and has worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its childhood vaccine schedule since 1995.
“If the American Academy of Pediatrics is giving medical guidance that is fueled by financial incentives, we will expose and put an end to this unlawful behavior,” Paxton said.
Earlier this year, Paxton launched investigations into multiple vaccine providers, examining whether they failed to disclose bonuses and other financial benefits tied to the number of vaccines administered.
He also accused pediatricians of denying care based on vaccination status and attaching physicians’ wages or employment to vaccine quotas.
Nearly three years after the October 7 massacre, the Israeli military and security forces continue to hunt down and eliminate the terrorists responsible. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) scored major operational success over the weekend, taking out several senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists involved in the attack.
The IDF, supported by the Shin Bet security agency, killed a commander of Hamas’s Nukhba terrorist force who invaded Israel on October 7, 2023. A strike in central Gaza “eliminated the terrorist Abdallah Adnan Taha Abu al-Tayf, a Nukhba commander in Hamas’ military wing,” the IDF announced. “The terrorist infiltrated Israeli territory during the October 7th Massacre. Throughout the war, he actively participated in combat against IDF troops.”
In a separate strike, the “IDF eliminated the terrorist Jalal Tsubeih, a commander in the Daraj Tuffah Battalion of Hamas’ military wing,” the military disclosed in the same statement.
An October 7 hostage taker and commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) Central Gaza Brigade was also killed in a recent Israeli strike, the IDF revealed on Monday.
The slain terrorist, Mahmoud Fatair, kidnapped 19-year-old Rom Braslavski. Rom was tortured and sexually assaulted by PJI terrorists during his long captivity. According to the BBC in November 2025, he “was sexually assaulted during his two years in captivity in Gaza.”
TPPF: “Flock Cameras Are An Assault On Your Constitutional Freedoms.”
Texans have a special way of dealing with infringements on privacy and the freedoms we enjoy.
Unregistered drones surveying our properties out in the sticks? That’s what the 12-gauge home defense system is for. Red light cameras that often prioritize revenue and control over public safety? The Texas legislature passed a law to ban that. Waiting for a glacially slow U.S. Congress to pass a Digital Bill of Rights? Federalism makes clear we had to take matters into our own hands.
Clearly, Texans understand that privacy is a fundamental prerequisite to being free—and that’s on both sides of the aisle. Polling conducted by my organization, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, suggests 9 out of 10 Texans believe as much. So it comes as no surprise that ire over Flock and similar Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) is shared by activists and advocates on both sides of the aisle.
And it also means the Texas Legislature will almost certainly do something about it next session.
ALPRs are not a new concept. Like more than one surveillance program, it began as an effort to combat terrorism, providing a novel method that allowed law enforcement to forego visual inspection and the time-consuming process of obtaining warrants and registration information. American police departments began using rudimentary ALPRs in the 2000s, arguing they “enhance their enforcement and investigative capabilities…[and] expedite the tedious and time-consuming process of comparing vehicle license plates with vehicles of interest.”
Whether unsophisticated ALPRs in the early days were a worthwhile investment is up for debate.
Proponents of Flock will point to the long history of this technology’s existence as reason to not fret over the current political landscape, but I’m not interested in that red herring. The reality is that technological shifts from simple contrast algorithms to advanced AI, pixelated cameras to high resolution photos that can capture clear shots in all conditions, and wide-angle lenses that can capture four or more times the number of lanes and cars as older cameras, have given rise to the narrative of mass surveillance.
To put into plain English, a police force in New York once boasted of capturing the license plates of 10,000 vehicles in a day; whereas a 2020 California state auditor report revealed that Sacramento’s Police Department recorded 24 times that amount, with close to 250,000 photos captured daily.
Proponents will quickly assert that these cameras only capture license plates, vehicle characteristics, distinguishing features (bumper stickers and license plate frames), and time and direction. But much like with brokers harvesting and selling your online data, it is not the individual data point has inherent value. It’s the fact that there is a stunning arsenal of these data-siphoning cameras across the nation, connecting all of those data points to generate a larger, far more invasive picture than a single snapshot in time. And this is precisely why there has been a well-documented cadre of police officers making use of this database to monitor their wives, exes, or random strangers.
As author and researcher Matthew Crawford puts it in reference to digital surveillance writ large, “The appeal, surely lies in not having to do things that we normally do for ourselves. The convenience may be worth the price; that’s for each of us to decide. But to do so with open eyes, one has to understand what the price is.”
If we are relying on an opaque, cherry-picked narrative of what personal information ALPRs can capture, how it is stored, the motive for retaining certain data, and whom it is ultimately sold or transferred to, we can’t possibly be informed enough to know the price of “enhanced safety.” Even worse, none of us even clicked “accept” to the terms of service while driving down I-35. So not only do we not know the price, we have no say in the matter.
“NY Socialist Can’t Pay Rent, Wants to Write State Budget.”
New York Socialist Brian Romero has not yet reached Albany, but he has already launched his first public spending initiative: covering his own rent.
Romero, the Democratic nominee for New York’s 34th Assembly District, launched a GoFundMe asking supporters to cover his rent and groceries while he waits to take office. The campaign sought $2,000 and collected more than $1,000 from 13 donors before disappearing Friday.
The timing was apparently a coincidence. Romero pulled the fundraiser shortly after the New York Post started asking questions.
Romero is not exactly facing a difficult general election. He won 66 percent of the Democratic primary vote, and Republicans did not bother fielding a candidate in a deep-blue Queens district. Once sworn in, he will collect a $142,000 annual salary plus a $203 daily allowance while the Assembly is in session.
But first, socialism needed a little crowdfunding.
“Now, defenders are embracing the prompt injection, too. ‘Context bombing’ tricks hacking agents into shutting down before they can do harm.'”
Prompt injections, the malicious commands attackers embed into content to entice large language models to follow them, have been attackers’ go-to tool for turning AI platforms against their users. A well-phrased command sneaked into an email or calendar invitation is often all it takes to cause the LLM to exfiltrate sensitive data or follow other harmful actions.
Now, defenders are embracing the prompt injection, too.
Researchers from Tracebit on Monday said they found that placing prompt injections alongside passwords, cryptographic keys, and other secrets stored on Amazon Web Services was often all that was needed to shut down attacks from AI hacking agents. The prompts direct the attacking LLM to perform an action forbidden by its guardrails, the safety barriers AI developers erect to prevent it from taking harmful actions. The LLM responds by shutting down.
Examples are a prompt that orders the LLM to provide steps for developing inhalable Anthrax spores, or, in the case of LLMs from Chinese developers, make references to the iconic Tank Man from the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Once the LLM encounters these forbidden commands, it no longer follows its existing commands. The researchers have named the technique context bombing.
Man foolishly threatens Texas Governor Greg Abbott over: A.) Deporting illegal aliens, B.) Eliminating wasteful government programs, or C.) Access to anime.
A Houston man faces a criminal case in Travis County for, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety, threatening the Governor’s Office over a law the man allegedly said prevented him from watching an anime.
Joseph Roy Ozment, 35, faces one third-degree felony count of terroristic threat against a public servant. KXAN has reached out to his court-appointed counsel for comment.
According to an affidavit written by a DPS special agent, Ozment allegedly called the Governor’s Office on the afternoon of July 25. DPS claims Ozment left the following voicemail (KXAN has redacted the profanity in the transcript provided by DPS):
“I don’t know which one of you sons of b—-es passed this motherf—ing bill to get this damn s— blocking my motherf—ing anime, but you whole a– motherf—ers need to unpass this s—. Y’all are f—ing ridiculous with your b—- a–es. My Google account says I’m f—ing over the age of 18, and your dumba– is passing these dumba– laws. I’m a f—ing stab every godd— one of you b—-es. Unlock my f—ing anime.”
The call was made from a cell phone that DPS claimed was registered to Ozment.
The affidavit does not say which anime Ozment tried to watch or how he attempted to watch it.
Most major anime streaming websites, such as Crunchyroll, HIDIVE and Yomi, remain available to access for Texans. KXAN double-checked this Thursday.
While the state legislature has not banned anime, two laws come to mind that could have impeded the caller’s access.
The first is a 2023 state law requiring adult websites to verify the age of any visitor before allowing access to content. In response, several pornographic streaming websites simply blocked all access from devices in Texas.
Another law is Texas’ app store age verification law. It requires a similar age verification process for smartphone users who want to download software from an app store such as Google Play. There’s currently ongoing litigation over the law’s constitutionality, but the law is in effect until that concludes.
In the voicemail, the caller said their Google account says they’re older than 18 years old. That would cover the app store requirements. It wouldn’t apply to pornographic websites, which are required to have users upload their photo ID.
One stands amazed at the stupidity of a man who thinks threatening the Governor will somehow restore his ability to spank his monkey to tentacle porn.
Given the difficulties of illustrating this item with anything remotely tasteful, I’m going with an, ah, “story adjacent image.”
Cambridge academic Jason Arday, accused of plagiarism, has the a record of serial lying that would make Jon Lovitz’s Patholical Liar blush.
Running a single marathon is a great achievement. Running 30 marathons is a spectacular feat. Running 30 marathons in 35 days is something only a world-class athlete could achieve. But running 30 marathons in 35 days, and running the final nine of those marathons with a broken leg – that’s an impossible feat that would require superhuman powers. But that is exactly what Jason Arday has claimed to achieve. But that’s not all, Jason Arday’s incredible feats aren’t just limited to running nearly 240 miles on a fractured leg without medical intervention, he also claimed to have run 600 miles in six days on a treadmill (without any evidence), played both football and snooker at a professional level (a boast that was apparently taken out of context), raised over £5.5 million for charity (but can’t name a single donor), managed to go 15 years with a barely a wink of sleep, and even appeared on the famous television documentary series Seven Up! – which originally premiered a whole 21 years before he was even born. This is the story of Cambridge University’s youngest-ever black professor, who was appointed as Professor of the Sociology of Education in 2023.
Snip.
We are meant to believe that a boy who was completely non-verbal due to autism and global developmental delay until age 11 and who was unable to read or write until 18, then went on to earn a PhD by the age of 29. This means that in just 11 years Jason managed to learn basic literacy and catch up on all those years of missed schooling, complete an undergraduate degree (which typically takes 3 years), complete two separate Master’s degrees (typically taking 1-2 years each), complete a PGCE teacher training qualification (taking 1 year) and then write a 100,000-word PhD dissertation (taking typically 3-4 years). In just over a decade, Jason had not only learnt to read and write, but condensed 12 years of higher education into a near record-breaking period of time that would prove his hyper-accelerated cognitive processing abilities were second to none. And he did it all whilst working multiple jobs and without sleeping
How did multiple UK institutions not detect Arday’s outrageous lies? Simple: Jason Arday is black.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has released its survey of the written policies of 493 colleges and universities and evaluated their compliance with First Amendment standards, which included 21 Texas institutions of higher learning.
Of the 379 four-year public institutions and 114 private institutions, FIRE gave each campus a red, yellow, or green light rating based on how their written regulations on student expression restrict free speech.
Red light institutions have at least one policy that both “clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech or bars public access to its speech-related policies by requiring a university login and password for access.” Nearly a quarter of the private schools evaluated received a red light rating, compared to roughly 10 percent of public universities.
Overall, red light ratings made up 13.2 percent of schools surveyed, down approximately 1.5 percent from last year. Since FIRE’s first report 20 years ago, red light ratings have dropped by 55 percentage points from 68.6 percent in 2006.
Rice University and the University of Texas (UT) at Dallas both received a red light rating for one of their harassment policies.
Snip.
The Texas colleges and universities that received a yellow light rating are:
It seems that people who thought they were Democrats are finally waking up to the fact that the party has left them.
First up: Bill Maher, who’s not down with the Dem’s open commie turn:
“Right before we left, Vice President JD Vance was on the show and I told him that if the Democratic Party keeps going in the direction of the DSA, my vote was in play.”
“Not a week goes by where I don’t read about some newly chosen exciting new face in the Democratic Party, and then when that face opens its mouth, the Communist Manifesto or some other crazy shit comes out.”
“New York Mayor Mamdani once tweeted Karl Marx’s words exactly. They’re not trying to hide it. Their most popular influencer, Hasan Piker, thinks communism is so groovy. He laments the fall of the two of the mostmurderous regimes in history, the Soviet Union and Chairman Mao’s China. Mamdami’s aid, his top aid, Cea Weaver, said, ‘If you don’t believe in the government’s sacred right to seize property, it’s over.’ And ‘Impoverish the white middle class.'”
“One of the new soon-to-be Democratic Congress people, Darializa Chevalier, supports seizing all properties from landlords, and said ‘seize the means of production.’ Mamdami has said the end goal is ‘seizing the means of production.’ I think they want to seize the means of production. Now maybe you missed that in school or missed school altogether, but that’s communism. That’s communism, which we tried and it doesn’t work.
“The DSA itself has switched. Even 5 years ago, it shunned communists. That changed. Things change. Now, the coalition within the DSA called the Marxist Unity Group is in ascendance. And I must take them at their word when their words include, ‘Our commitment is to the long-term struggle for a fully liberated, classless society in a word, communism.’ What do they have to do? Tweet out, ‘Elect more communists?’ [laughter] Oh, yeah. Cea Weaver did that.”
“Yes, my vote is in play. I’m not voting for anyone who thinks the wrong side won the Cold War or cheers for the Intifada like it’s the World Cup.”
“Last month, two Democratic congressmen released an open pledge they wanted their fellow Democratic members to sign. It said, ‘We are capitalist, not socialist. We want safety, not lawlessness. We are proud, not ashamed of America. These should not be hard words for a congressional Democrat to sign on to. You know how many did? Eight. Eight out of a 212.”
“Guys, really, there’s got to be an easier way to lose the swing states.”
“No, this nonsense is not where most Democratic politicians are right now. But it’s also becoming a raging Fyre Festival in the party that neither is anyone putting out. People are actually getting elected now who literally don’t think we should have police or prisons or borders. And again, they’re not lying about who they are. The media is.”
“Ask Miss Chevalier about the border. She says, ‘Yes, literally abolish the border.'”
“This crowd literally wants to get rid of our form of government, the Senate, but also, and I quote, replace the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress. Yeah, no biggie. Just taking the very essence of our government, which is three branches checking each other and canning two and a half of them. Who could be this nuts? I’ll tell you who. morons who are still wearing COVID masks in 2026.”
“Since the far left, the far far left is overwhelmingly made up of affluent, ultra-woke white people. You raised your kids wrong. You told your precious brats that every brain fart was genius. And now those brain farts are becoming Democratic Party policy.”
“Francesca Hong, yet another major Democratic candidate who’s all in on abolishing abolishing the police and is running for governor of Wisconsin says, ‘I think that my perfect world would be a world without prisons because we all see the humanity in one another and then we know nobody’s disposable.’ Well, murder victims are.”
“So many liberals shit themselves every time Trump puts gold on something in the Oval Office. ‘Oh, it’s historic.’ And the separation of powers isn’t?”
“Get your head out of your ass. I would vote for Sarah Palin before this shit.”
“This is Evan Barker, a former Democrat activist and someone who basically got kicked out of the Democrat party for not being woke enough.”
“Now, I realize that in the year of our Lord 2026, saying, ‘Oh, the Democrats are crazy. The Democrats are mental,’ is not actually terribly incisive political commentary. However, it’s always different when you’re on the outside compared to when you’re on the inside. And getting the inside story is actually more revealing, because of course from the outside there are a bunch of things about the situation we just weren’t aware of that it’s nice to be aware of.”
“And I again, I realize this isn’t terribly shocking to hear, but it’s the level of anti-white hatred that clearly manifested at every level of the Democrat party that Evan Barker kept just running straight face into. just the shocking amount and the explicit racial hierarchies that the Democrats of color were bringing to every circumstance, every interaction, every meeting, every, you know, instance of having to do work in the Democrat Party, loaded with race, completely loaded with it.”
“If you were white, well, this was entirely to your disadvantage.”
[Quoting from the book]: “Almost all Democratic operatives, regardless of their type, paroted the same lines to each other. It was common for us to call Republicans racist almost daily, convincing each other that the alt-right was absolutely terrifying. A force that literally wanted to murder us.”
“This is quite interesting because I’ve met a lot of Republicans in my time. I’ve been to America well probably more than a dozen times for quite long periods of time, weeks at a time. I’ve spent a lot of time meeting some quite important people in in on in the American right. And they’ve not all been the same. They’ve actually all said mostly different things to me. I mean, a lot of them have like, you know, similar views on economics maybe. But they don’t all just parrot the same lines verbatim. They will say different things even if they’re heading in the same direction. But often you’ll get this wide range of opinion on well basically any subject. I mean admittedly you know there’s a certain band that this opinion is within, but it’s not just the same wrote lines repeated over and over at all.”
“The Democrat Party, and I don’t use this lightly. You’ll know that I’ve done lots of work on reading about cults in the past. It genuinely seems to take on the pattern of a cult. And that’s what we see out of Evan Barker’s book here.”
[Quoting from the book]: “A mixed race woman “decided to go after me, sending my boss an email. quote, ‘This is not the first time an entitled white woman has spoken to me disrespectfully, and I suppose it will not be the last. I am not the only person of color she has spoken disrespectfully to on this team. Evan’s problematic mannerisms have been noticed by multiple people and not just me, and that’s clearly a way of trying to drag down a person that you think is somehow your competitor…Nabila didn’t like that I was assertive, that I didn’t automatically defer to her for being a woman of color, and that I spoke to everyone in the same way regardless of their oppression status.”
“Evan, you aren’t a Democrat. You are never a Democrat. You’re a normal person trying to do normal things. If you don’t believe in oppression statuses for and hierarchies of color, then you are not a part of this team. And I’m surprised it took them so long to kick you out.”
Race card victim woman says they should take “diversity, equity, and inclusion training.”
“Now, processing is a huge part of cult mentality. So a processing session is when someone in authority essentially patrols the boundaries and orthodoxy of the cult. So, a person in the cult who is problematic, who is and they talk to outsiders or doing whatever they’re doing that’s wrong, they sit and have essentially one-on-one interviews, and it’s kind of inquisition-like where they’ll ask them questions and, you know, take the narratives they give and try and poke holes in them and try and make them feel essentially a kind of gaslighting, and try and make them understand that they are in some way a bad person for challenging the orthodoxy of the cult. And that is what diversity, equity, and inclusion training is.”
Only one candidate she worked for kept in touch with Evan. “She wanted to talk to me about her dating life and have me set her up on dates but she refused to date white men. She said she was physically repulsed by them.”
“The same woman told me she ate magic mushrooms once with Texas Congressman Greg Caesar in a field. Was he also on some drug induced journey to heal the wounds inflicted by white people?”
“And in 2024, she put out a video saying that she’s becoming disillusioned with the Democrats. It went viral. She went to see a therapist on this. Mental, right? So she scheduled a Zoom call with her psychiatrist.”
“And so the the therapist was like, ‘Well, the the Democrats are right. Obviously, look, I understand your frustration with the Democrats, but Evan, it’s crucial for a stable society that Trump does not get back into the White House. That concern outweighs everything else right now. I mean, what’s done is done. You can’t change your decision, but I’m not saying it was wrong, but it’s possible that it was.'”
“And again, this feels very much like cultlike processing. Okay? Now, someone with authority, you’re going to subject yourself to that, and they’re going to sit there and essentially tell you that you are the bad person. You are wrong because you’re endangering the project. Your dissent endangers the project. So, you are not allowed to think outside of the boundaries of the barriers of this cult. You, in fact, need to confess your own sins. You need to accept that you are the bad person. You are the problem here and you need to essentially submit yourself fully to the authority of the leader of the cult.”
More and more former Democrats are coming to see how poisonous, insane and cult-like the party they previously aligned with has become. Will enough voter share their disillusionment?
RFK, Jr. presses the pause button for medicaid payments over Democrat fraud, we pound Iran some more, Ukraine sinks floating cranes and sets giant logistics hubs aflame, and a punk rock auction.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have paused more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota due to fraud concerns.
“That includes more than $887 million for California and over $200 million for Minnesota,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a press conference. “If those states want that money, they need to provide documentation that these payments are legitimate.”
“In Minnesota and California, our reviews are going back to just over the last few years, turned up the same recurring theme again and again every single quarter: Claims in these same high-risk categories that the states have not yet been able to document fully and acceptably to the federal government. Claims that are unresolved and claims that smell like fraud. And if it smells like fraud, we’re not paying for it anymore.”
RFK Jr. says HHS loses $100,000,000,000 a year to theft.
He found some thieves would bribe poor people with flat screen TVs to get their patient numbers and enroll them in hospice.
Then they would proceed to bill Medicaid “$6,000 a month FOREVER.”
RFK JR: “We shut down 800 hospices. You know what a hospice is? Where you’re going to die. Typically, if you go to a hospice, you leave within 18 days because your dying is terminal.”
“We started looking at these hospices in Los Angeles, and the people never died. Two or three years later they were there, and we’re paying $6,000 a month.”
“We found a hotel room with 29 hospices in it. I mean a hotel, every room was a hospice, and none of them had any patients. They were just addresses.”
“The guys who own them, they were Estonians and Armenians and people from Eastern Europe who were getting the patient numbers. They were stealing them from doctors’ offices.”
“They were also going into poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles and they’d say to the people, ‘We’ll give you this $375 flat-screen TV. You give us your patient number and we’re going to enroll you in this hospice. You don’t ever have to go. We’re just going to enroll you,’ and then we’ll charge Medicaid $6,000 a month forever. And the guy never dies, of course, because he was never sick.”
“We didn’t get a single call from a congressman or from a business owner saying, ‘Oh, you shut down my hospice and all these patients are on the street.’ None of them, because they were all crooked and they knew they were crooke
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces successfully completed the 13th straight night of strikes against Iran, July 23, at 9 p.m. ET.
CENTCOM targeted Iranian military command centers, drone storage facilities, communication networks, coastal surveillance sites, and maritime capabilities to further diminish the threat Iran poses to civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
The international waterway remains open for transit despite recent attacks from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Commercial vessels continue to freely navigate the strait with U.S. military support.
I’m noticing a couple of dogs that aren’t currently barking: Hezbollah and Hamas. It turns out that when your paymaster is broke, running out of missiles and getting the snot blown out of them, they don’t have a lot of time, money and attention to lavish on helping their two catspaws murder Jews…
When President Donald Trump talked about some of the things China has done to literally steal our democracy by seeing to it that, in 2020, its Manchurian candidate was elected in the form of a semi-comatose Joe Biden, many of the things he mentioned had already been in the news, but they may not have been covered by the legacy media.
Case in point: Trump mentioned in his July 16 address to the nation that China stole TikTok data to create fake U.S. driver’s licenses.
If you follow conservative media, you may have known this. If you get your news from the legacy media, you most likely didn’t know it, and if you heard it now, you won’t believe it. That’s the group Trump was targeting in his address. His national address strategy was to speak past the legacy media and to begin the process of planting the seeds of the truth in the minds of those who rely on the CNNs, ABCs, and NBCs of the world.
Strategically, Trump is now trying to break through the information barrier that the legacy media and the left have created to keep the majority of Americans in the dark on what’s really happened to corrupt our elections.
A year ago, Brooke Singman published a lengthy piece on the Fox News website that detailed just how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) executed its TikTok data theft scheme. Her primary source for the story was the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
The Senate Judiciary Committee launched its own investigation into this after the FBI had announced its own investigation in July 2025. As Singman reported, the CCP allegedly worked to get “fake driver’s licenses to Chinese sympathizers in the U.S. who would cast a vote for candidate Biden.”
It is not clear how successful the CCP was in getting its ballots for Biden to count.
In July 2025, a Grassley spokesperson told Fox News, “Chairman Grassley is in receipt of an FBI document (response) to a request he made based on legally protected whistleblower disclosures…. The document alleges serious national security concerns that need to be fully investigated by the FBI.”
As stated in that document, the intent of the alleged scheme was for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to produce and export fraudulent U.S. driver’s licenses to Chinese sympathizers in the U.S., so as to create “tens of thousands of fraudulent mail-in votes for US Presidential candidate Joe Biden, in late August 2020.”
According to the document at the center of these investigations, by August 2020, “the Chinese government had produced a large amount of fraudulent United States driver’s licenses that were secretly exported to the United States,” Fox News reported.
The fraudulent drivers licenses would allow tens of thousands of Chinese students and immigrants sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party to vote for US Presidential Candidate USPER Joe ((Biden)), despite not being eligible to vote in the United States… China had collected private US user data from millions of TikTok accounts, to include name, ID and address, which would allow the Chinese government to use real US persons’ information to create the fraudulent driver’s license, the document states.
Reporting on the investigation indicates that the fake IDs included true ID numbers and the true addresses of U.S. citizens, which made the fraud difficult to detect.
“China planned to use the fraudulent driver’s licenses to account for tens of thousands of mail-in votes,” according to the document.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill spurned the Department of Justice’s request for information on the nearly 6,600 noncitizens who were improperly added to the state’s voter rolls, raising the ire of Trump administration officials who are making election security a priority heading in the November midterms.
The move follows Sherrill’s announcement on Tuesday that thousands of noncitizens had been added to New Jersey voter rolls, with 400 individuals casting ballots. Later that day, the DOJ requested the names, addresses, nationalities, and registration locations of the 6,600 non-citizens who were marked as voters, even though they identified themselves as noncitizens. Noncitizens convicted of voting in U.S. elections can face criminal penalties including deportation.
“Ensuring that U.S. citizen’s votes are not illegally diluted by noncitizen’s votes is of paramount importance,” the letter from the DOJ stated.
Sherrill voiced concerns that the information would be misused by the DOJ.
“We are not in the practice of turning this kind of personally identifying data over to the federal government because we have seen them weaponize it,” Sherrill said at an event on Thursday.
And by “weaponize” she means “Keeping our precious illegal aliens from voting for Democrats and/or deporting them.” You know, enforcing the law.
Here’s Melat Kiros, a “democratic” socialist activist, explaining the party’s plan to fundamentally change America by electing people from the “Global South”….
That’s the explicit plan from the DSA.
Mass immigration, elect immigrants to office Mamdani and Ilhan Omar-style, and have them fundamentally change what America is.
On February 2, 2021, a national targeting security specialist at U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center circulated a referral to colleagues across the agency. The subject was Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, scheduled to land at John F. Kennedy International Airport three days later aboard Qatar Airways flight 701 from Doha, arriving 2:25 p.m. He was returning from the World Health Organization’s mission to Wuhan investigating the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
The referral asked that Daszak be considered for a Tactical Terrorism Response Team examination – a secondary inspection that can include questioning and a review of electronic devices. Which, now we know, never happened.
Senator Rand Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released the underlying records Monday. They show CBP flagged Daszak as “an extremely high person of interest,” built out a formal targeting event, and then stood down two days before his flight at the request of the FBI’s New York Field Office.
It’s bad enough that Zohran Mamdani has become the leader of the new Democratic Party, having been anointed by none other than its King, Barack Obama. But now, their shining new star, Hasan Piker, is not even bothering to hide behind the words “Democratic Socialist.” He’s gone full-blown Commie.
These pitiful cosplay revolutionaries are not a match for Donald Trump, who can flick them off his jacket like a piece of lint, but he only has a few more years left, and the Democrats are collapsing into an even more fanatical cult. They have no one to blame but themselves.
Mamdani had made big promises to “arrest Benjamin Netanyahu” if he ever came to New York as a “war criminal.” But he had to backtrack on that because he doesn’t have the authority to do so because Trump smacked him down.
He still calls on the Federal Government to make the arrest. To me, he looks like someone who believes he’s the alternative president in our virtual Civil War, like a would-be Jefferson Davis.
Snip.
Hasan Piker is now riding high on his newfound fame and glory. He proudly displays the front page of the New York Times with the Twin Towers ablaze after 9/11 and has said on streaming that the US “deserved” it, later clarifying that our foreign policy was bad enough that we should be attacked.
Hasan Piker is dangerous because he is so stupid. He’s so stupid, he doesn’t even seem to know the horrific atrocities under Mao. He showed up at a recent Democratic event wearing a Mao costume.
Hasan Piker, like Zohran Mamdani, like all of the Manson family girlies who fawn all over them, were raised in American schools amid Critical Race and Gender Theory, the so-called “real history” they indoctrinated our kids with. Now we are seeing the fruits of their labor.
It’s Joseph McCarthy’s ultimate nightmare finally realized. Maybe it wasn’t true that the military was infested with Commies, but if it came back to today, he’d see evidence of infiltration everywhere, from culture to academia to politics.
If the Democrats go Full Commie thanks to the stalking horse of Social Justice, then it really will be time to stock up on ammunition. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
For those who know, rigged elections do happen in the Americas. They’ve been happening for years in Nicaragua, ever since the Sandinistas brought Daniel Ortega to power in the 1980s.
Many young people will have forgotten that there was massive enthusiasm for the Sandinistas across the international left. Five years ago, Quillette ran a wonderful piece about the support for Sandinistas found across the American left. It’s amazing how many leftists of the 1980s who went for the Sandinistas have stayed with us: Bernie Sanders, Bill de Blasio.
The poor in Nicaragua are in a wretched condition. Ortega effectively made himself president for life when he exceeded the country’s constitutional limits on his office. This week, he finally announced plans for the abolition of elections. He explained in a public rant that this was necessary to stop “the traitors.”
The only thing missing was Ortega announcing that he had to end elections “to save our democracy.”
I was writing about this commie scumbag back in college, and he’s long overdue to be dirtnapped. Maybe after we’ve finished with Venezuela, Iran and Cuba…
“Two Democratic Senate candidates have received backlash for accepting donations from a Democrat megadonor with former ties to Jeffrey Epstein. James Talarico and Sen. Jon Ossoff, D- Ga., who is running for re-election, have both received donations from Reid Hoffman, a billionaire who has admitted to spending time on Epstein’s Caribbean island.” It’s always OK when they do it…
“University of Houston Poised To Eliminate 40 Percent of Core Curriculum.” Which is a good thing, since the “core curriculum” items being eliminated are absolute social justice bullshit.
As first reported by the Houston Chronicle, UH officials are currently finalizing a proposal to bring before University of Houston System regents at the August board meeting.
The Chronicle reported that approximately 100 courses are on the chopping block. Examples include:
Black Liberation Theology
Black Liberation Studies
Intro to LGBT Studies
Intro to Women’s Studies
Latino Leadership, Activism, and Organizing
Mexican American Urban Communities
Sexuality and Society
The Chronicle further reported that while UH will eliminate core eligibility for coursework explicitly grounded in grievance studies, government and history coursework discussing “histories for specific demographics” was not impacted.
The review in question is required under Senate Bill 37, a measure state lawmakers passed in 2025. The new law also requires boards of regents to conduct a review of all general education curricula every five years.
General education requirements are a set of courses all students must complete, regardless of major. Higher education authors Jason Brennan and Phil Magness have criticized these mandates as a subsidy for economically unsustainable programs that frequently protect woke curricula from accountability.
Eliminate them all and lay off those teaching them.
Ukraine has agreed on a plan to acquire 16 Rafale fighter jets from France together with the accompanying weapon systems, French President Emmanuel Macron said at a press conference here late Monday following a meeting of the group of countries that have pledged support to Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Macron agreed on a roadmap between their two countries that also includes the acquisition of a first batch of SAMP/T NG air-defense batteries, complementing systems and their missiles to be delivered in coming weeks, Macron said. France will also provide radar systems and additional missiles, the president said.
The countries further approved licensing agreements for production in Ukraine of the AASM glide-bomb kit, the Aster 30 air-defense interceptor that arms the SAMP/T system as well as the SCALP/Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missile, Macron said.
Don’t get too excited, though. “The first Rafale jets are expected to fly in Ukrainian skies as early as 2028 or 2029.”
Concerning news: “U.S. Reaches 41 New World Screwworm Cases as Sterile Fly Production Continues Rollout.”
Primary news: “Trump-backed candidates, including ex-Giants, Jets kicker Jay Feely, easily win Arizona primaries — socialist House hopeful gets smoked.”
A full slate of Republican candidates endorsed by President Trump, including former NFL kicker Jay Feely, emerged victorious Tuesday in Arizona’s primary elections while a Democratic socialist House hopeful suffered a crushing defeat.
Feely, who played for six teams — including the Jets and Giants — during his 14 seasons as a pro, defeated former state lawmaker Joseph Chaplik in the Grand Canyon State’s 1st Congressional District, which covers northeastern Maricopa County and is the wealthiest in Arizona.
The 1st District seat is being vacated by Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), who opted to run for governor. Democrats have targeted the district as a key flip opportunity as they try to regain the House majority after four years out of power.
Feely, a former CBS football analyst who was endorsed by Trump in January, touted his close ties to the president on the campaign trail.
“Who can call [Trump] and who can get him to answer? That’s me,” he said during a primary debate last month. “He will take my call and he will listen. I have the ability to have the ear of the president.”
In the Democratic primary, former state Rep. Amish Shah led onetime TV journalist Marlene Galán-Woods by 6.9 percentage points with 84% of the expected vote in, but the race had yet to be called as of Wednesday morning.
In the open 5th District, Trump-backed former Pinal County sheriff Mark Lamb topped construction contractor Daniel Keenan by nearly 17 percentage points.
Lamb, who rose to prominence for taking on Mexican cartels smuggling drugs across the border and into Arizona, will head to the midterms as the heavy favorite over Democratic nominee Elizabeth Lee in the solidly red district.
Snip.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who has represented the 5th District since 2017, opted not to seek another term and ran in the GOP gubernatorial primary instead.
That decision paid off handsomely as Biggs, with the support of Trump, topped Schweikert Tuesday night by nearly 60 percentage points.
Snip.
In the 4th District, centered in the Phoenix suburbs of Tempe and Mesa, incumbent Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) swamped Democratic socialist primary challenger Kai Newkirk by 30 percentage points.
Newkirk, who accused Stanton of being too supportive of Israel and corporations and slammed the congressman’s vote in favor of the Laken Riley Act mandating illegal immigrants who are arrested, charged or convicted of “burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting” be held by immigration authorities.
Food contamination news: “Nearly 1.6M eggs from Texas farms recalled for possible Salmonella contamination.”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a statement on Wednesday detailing the voluntary recall of 1,589,577 dozen eggs from Midwest Poultry Services, L.P., which may be contaminated with Salmonella Enteritidis.
Midwest Poultry Services said that as of Wednesday, it was not aware of any illnesses related to the eggs.
The identifying codes printed on the left or right sides of the carton P-1950 or 0840962 with a Julian date between 157 and 184 are recalled, according to the FDA report. They were available to consumers at Kroger stores in Texas and Louisiana, as well as Brookshire Grocery locations across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico and Mississippi. The full list of products that have been recalled is provided in the FDA’s announcement.
“Judge puts temporary pause on Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.” “U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the Northern District of California issued a temporary restraining order barring Paramount from closing the transaction, a corporate tie-up that would unite two movie studios, two streaming platforms and two news organizations under the control of David Ellison, the son of billionaire technology tycoon Larry Ellison.” I know you’ll be shocked to learn that Martínez-Olguín was appointed by “Joe Biden.”
Missed this from a couple of months ago: “Every Single Horse Running In The 151st Kentucky Derby Is Related To Secretariat.”
“Astronomers announce the discovery of space sugar.
Using the Yebes 40-m and IRAM 30-m radio telescopes, the astronomers scanned the molecular cloud G+0.693−0.027, a chemically rich region located roughly 8,200 parsecs (26,745 light-years) from Earth near the Milky Way’s center.
They picked up 12 sets of radio emission lines that matched the predicted spectral fingerprint of erythrulose, a four-carbon sugar with the chemical formula C4H8O4.
‘Erythrulose, with 14 atoms in its structure, represents the largest non-cyclic molecular species identified so far in the interstellar medium, and the first detected molecule containing four oxygen atoms,’ they said.
Potter and Potter have an auction for “Skaters, Punks & Rebels: A Countercultural Cross-Section” next month. Probably not bidding on anything, but man, a 1983 concert with Black Flag, Fear and Circle Jerks would have been something to behold…
So here’s a video arguing that, since humans are primates, doing a deadhang improves a whole lot of muscle groups. It says most people struggle to do ten seconds at first. Since I don’t have a chinning bar, that’s not an exercise I can do at home, so I did two separate ten second hangs last Saturday on park equipment while I was out walking my dogs. Result: A few hour later my left wrist was in quite a bit of pain, but that faded over a day. This Saturday I think I’ll go for 12 seconds…but only once.
The difference between having a real DA who prosecutes criminals, and a Soros-backed DA who doesn’t is stark. While most of America was seeing a drop in murder rates, Austin under Soros-backed DA Jose Garza has seen murder rates rise by 74% since 2019.
Amid a likely decrease in homicide rates across the nation, both Dallas and Austin have experienced an increase in homicides compared to last year, with Austin’s homicide rate for the first half of 2026 apparently 74 percent higher than in 2019, according to a new study released Thursday.
Commissioned by the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), the study examined patterns for 13 types of crime in 36 U.S. cities. It found that reported homicides appear to have dropped by 18 percent from the same period in 2025, and by 51 percent since the 2022 peak.
“Murder and other crime rates are falling across the map, in cities with different political leadership, housing and economic conditions, policing and prosecution strategies, violence reduction models, and levels of federal enforcement activity,” said CCJ President and CEO Adam Gelb in a statement.
Of the 30 cities reporting homicide rates, Arlington saw a decrease of 60 percent and Dallas saw an increase of 30 percent compared to the first half of 2025.
What does Dallas have in common with Austin? A Soros-backed DA, in this case John Creuzot.
CCJ also looked at longer trends and found that compared to 2019, there were 31 percent fewer reported homicides in the study cities in the first half of 2026, with some — such as Arlington — seeing drops of at least 50 percent or more, but Austin was among four cities that reported a higher rate.
According to the study, four cities had homicide rates from January to June higher than in 2019: Austin at 74 percent; Norfolk, Virginia at 36 percent; Minneapolis, Minnesota at 26 percent; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at 4 percent.
In addition to reduced policing after the #BlackLivesMatter riots, Minneapolis has a Soros-backed DA in Mary Moriarty. Norfolk is another city with a Soros-backed DA, Ramin Fatehi.
Although Dallas’ homicide rate is trending higher over last year, compared to 2019, that city’s rate has dropped by 22 percent. Of the other Texas cities analyzed, since 2019, San Antonio dropped by 8 percent, Fort Worth by 26 percent, and Arlington by 60 percent.
Snip.
Austin and Travis County have drawn controversy over the past few years due to Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza’s allegedly lenient approach to the prosecution of crime. First elected in 2020, Garza has been accused of dropping or reducing charges in hundreds of criminal cases, and last year, Garza’s office reportedly failed to bring timely indictments for crimes that included violent felonies, leading to the dismissals of hundreds of cases.
Earlier this year, Gov. Greg Abbott cited Garza in his call for new legislation to create a statewide prosecutor and a mechanism for removing “rogue” local prosecutors. A ,a href=”https://rightoncrime.com/going-rogue-how-radical-reformist-prosecutors-are-endangering-public-safety/”>study from the Texas Public Policy Foundation published in July also listed concerns over practices in Travis County.
It matters a great deal whether your county has a DA who’s actually dedicated to fighting crime, or a soft-on-crime, Soros-backed DA who loves putting criminals back on the streets. And American citizens are paying for that difference with their lives.
“During a Texas high school track meet, Karmelo Anthony, a 19-year-old student, and Austin Metcalf, 17-year-old student, got into a heated dispute after Karmelo entered Austin’s tent, which was like a rivalry school’s tent. An argument followed and then allegedly Karmelo said, “Touch me and see what happens.” And so Austin shoved him and Karmelo pulled a knife out. And yeah, Austin then passed away in his brother’s arms.”
“During the trial, jurors listened to witnesses accounts of the events, reviewed video evidence, and after a few days, the jury found Karmelo Anthony guilty and he was sentenced to 35 years in prison. And everyone accepted that outcome because they understand how the law works and they respect our justice system. Heh heh.”
Shouting black man on video: “Only good cracker is a dead cracker!”
“In this video, we are going to discuss the insane reactions to the Karmelo Anthony trial, read some tweets, watch some Tik Toks, as well as debunk a bunch of misinformation because I am just tired of seeing the same ridiculous regurgitated talking points, repeated ad nauseam by hundreds and thousands of people just believing it as gospel, hyping themselves up into a race war. No, I am not kidding. That is how bad it is getting.”
Random black tweeter: “White people are not victims of racism. You can’t be a victim of a system you created.”
Shoe0nHead: “Hey, 23-year-old white guy who can’t find a job and still lives with your parents. Did you know you created the entire system we’re in right now and therefore it’s totally acceptable to hate you and be racist towards you?”
Random black tweeter: “Only a black child can be minding their business, get ambushed, bullied, and pushed around and become the aggressor for protecting himself.”
Shoe0nHead: “He was quite literally not minding his own business. He was in a rivals team tent and was asked to leave like a dozen times. Witnesses say he started escalating it into a fight and then stab someone in the heart. That’s not minding your business.”
“His family raised like a million dollars on GoFundMe and then blew it all on a new house and fucking Cadillac. So then they had to get a public defender.”
“Do these people just live in a completely different reality? A guy gets put in prison for murder and they’re like, ‘Wow, what’s the point of even following the law anymore?'”
“It was the white son that was murdered. Why are they acting like the black son was murdered?”
“Literally, multiple witnesses, including black witnesses, including Karmelo’s own friends said that Karmelo was the aggressor in the situation. Also, just in general, murder is not the acceptable punishment for a shove, for a push. That’s not how that works.”
“Black people are held to a higher standard.” “In this case, the higher standard of do not stab people.”
“Where do these people live? Earth 2?”
“Every black defendant in every court everywhere is Carmelo* Anthony.” “Go do jury duty so you can go blindly support any black person regardless of what they did.”
“This was just straight up a black kid stabbed a white kid and they’re losing their minds because he’s going to prison over it. Fascinating.”
“Black people can’t be racist, stupid hoe.”
Perspective black jurors were excused because they admitted they would never vote to convict Anthony. Online leftwing blacks tell them to lie. “Get in there and lie to the court so you can free a person cuz he murdered a white guy. Incredible stuff.”
Responding to a BlueSky post: ” Oh my god, what has this country come to when a man can’t freely murder another man in cold blood and get away with it? Literally Jim Crow.”
BlueSky post with a pride flag thumbnail: “He saved himself from being lynched and now he has to spend decades in prison. Racist country.” “Huh? He was being lynched.” “Yes.” “Do these people live in the Netflix adaptation version of reality or something? What is going on? Stabby? Jail. No stabby? No jail.”
Rare normal poster: “Anyone defending Karmelo Anthony knows that they’re not defending him in good faith. Karmelo is obviously guilty of a murder that he intentionally instigated. Defending like this only hurts the black community. We need to hold ourselves accountable and hold ourselves to a higher standard.” “Oh my god! A normal person on BlueSky! Bro, what are you doing? Get out of there!”
Random black woman on video: “If we had segregation still, none of this would have happened. He wouldn’t have had no interactions with any white boy because we would have been in an all black school.” “We are going to reverse engineer segregation, aren’t we? But wokely. We don’t want those evil white people drinking out of the same water fountain as us. Am I right?”
Random sane black tweet: “I’m black. I haven’t stabbed anyone in the chest after being asked to leave a tent. I’m not in prison. I’m free. It’s not hard to not commit a crime.” Replies? ” You ain’t black.” “Because being black is supporting all black people everywhere, regardless of what they have done.”
Another random black Twitter loon: “Dig Austin Metcalf up and stab his ass again.”
“Apparently, a bunch of people on Tik Tok are doing the Austin bop where they dance to a song made about Austin Metcalf’s murder while reenacting the stabbing. They were also making AI photos of themselves pissing on Austin’s grave.”
“These people are freaks. Martin Luther King Jr. would be rolling in his grave looking at all this.”
More videos celebrating the death of Austin Metcalf and wishing death on his family. “This got so bad that people were actually going out and assaulting white people to get revenge. Obviously, I can’t show these videos, but there were multiple instances of this. These people live in a delusional alternate reality, and they’re becoming radicalized to take revenge for shit that isn’t even happening.”
“I got five boys. I don’t know what I ain’t got nothing to tell them no more.” “I don’t know. Not to kill people?…Nobody is hating Karmelo because he is black. They are hating Karmelo because he killed someone.”
“‘Remember when Shoe was a leftist?’ A yes, the famous leftist policy being pro-murder. I remember back when Shoe0nHead was pro murder. Silly me. How could I fall so far? Leftism isn’t about wealth inequality or workers rights. No, no. It’s about letting black people stab white people.” To be fair, this does seem to be the animating thought behind Soros-backed DAs, that no black person should ever be jailed for committing a crime, because racism. Or revolution.
“There were thousands and thousands of videos and tweets just like this. You probably get the point. These weren’t just like cherrypicked. The they were everywhere. But it wasn’t just Twitter nobodies and BlueSky nobodies. There was also sitting Congresspeople saying this insane shit.” Jasmine Crockett snippet sniped.
Shoe ends up pining for the 1990s. “I kind of feel like race relations were better back then cuz it was all like, ‘Oh, we don’t see color.’ And then they flipped it and they were like, ‘Actually, if you don’t see color, you’re racist. You have to acknowledge your white privilege and you’re a colonizer.'”
Yes, race relations in the 1990s were better, because that was before Obama brought in all his “racial healing.” A Democratic president could still have his “Sister Souljah” moment and stand up to the radical left wing of his own party and pursue policies that fought crime rather than encouraging it.
Precious few Democrats can do that anymore, because the Sister Souljahs make up the ideological core of the party. It’s Sister Souljah all the way down, and just about any Democrat officeholder will have to offer obsequious bows for offending the Party’s Souljah soul brigade.
White guilt has been weaponized by hard left social justice cadres, who are always on the lookout for their next George Floyd martyr to keep black people pulling the (D) lever every election. The entire ideological makeup of the Democrat Party is geared to cater to the “dead cracker” crowds and ensure that no Democrat running for nation office can ever have a Sister Souljah moment ever again…
*”Karmelo” is the correct spelling for the convicted murderer, but where tweets etc. got it wrong I’ve left them as posted.
